September 15, 2020
Dear Friends,
In the first chapter of John’s Gospel, as Jesus was going around Galilee choosing disciples, Philip told Nathanael that he should “come and see” the one about whom Moses and the prophets wrote. “He is from Nazareth,” Philip said, and Nathanael’s response was, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nazareth in Jesus’ day was a small, secluded, easy to ignore village, so Nathanael’s question was not completely out of line. And today, what is Nazareth like? For one thing it is quite colorful with numerous spice shops, olive presses and distinctive cuisine. It is also the largest Arab city in Israel with 60% of its inhabitants Muslim and about 40% Christian. Apparently, very few Jews live in Nazareth. !
Last year an interesting liturgy festival was held there, the brainchild of an Arab Christian citizen, whose dream it has been to bring western classical music to the Arabs living in Galilee and beyond in the rest of Israel. When Nabeel Abboud Ashkar and his brother, Saleem, were growing up, their parents, who were lovers of western classical music, made sure their sons had lessons in piano and the violin. Saleem turned out to be a piano prodigy, playing a Mozart concerto at the age of ten with the Haifa Symphony Orchestra. At 17 he played in Chicago with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and at 22 he was in Carnegie Hall. His brother’s musical career, however, was not in a straight line. Nabeel studied both physics and music at the university, finally joining an orchestra in Spain, whose goal was to bring young Israelis and Arabs together to play classical music in some of the greatest concert halls in the world. In 2006 he returned to Nazareth with the goal of establishing the city’s first classical music conservatory.
The conservatory began with 25 students, but by the end of the first year it had nearly doubled in size. The students were at first only Muslim and Christian, but eventually Jewish students also joined. He then took some 8 and 9 year old students, who had been playing their instruments for less than three years to a competition in Tel Avi. To enter the competition the students were supposed to have been studying for five years, but such details did not stop Nabeel. And the result was that ten of his students won prizes. When the jury asked where the students were from, and they answered, “Nazareth,” there was shock. In fact, the question was asked a second time, because they could not believe they had heard correctly. I guess some things never change. The suspicion is still that nothing this good could ever come out of Nazareth! Yet, to the contrary, much good has been coming out of Nazareth. Two of the conservatory students won first prize in a violin competition in Tel Avi. The result of all this success has been the expansion of the program to other parts of Israel with the intention of getting Arab and Jewish students to study and play together.
The Festival of Liturgy, which took place in Nazareth last year, began with a concert by a choir from Germany, which sang a variety of sacred music from Tallis to Brahms and Britten. It also included some Jewish music and in the future the hope is to include Muslim liturgical music as well. The aim of the festival is to bring all kinds of people together to experience great music while celebrating the city of Nazareth and its cultural and religious diversity. Though much of the music was Christian, by no means is the Festival intended for Christians only. In fact, the Festival was supported by Muslim, Jewish and Christian business owners, and over half the attendees were Jews from all over Israel while the rest were Christians and Muslims from Nazareth.
When people of different backgrounds come together to study and play music, something very special happens. Deep bonds grow because they share a love for the music, and they want others to experience the sheer beauty of it. So, it is more than the enjoyment of playing together, as important as that is. It is also the experience of playing for other people, inviting others into the musical experience, which for many people was completely new. Most had never heard Mozart’s Mass in C Minor or Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols. And people were deeply moved by the sheer and powerful beauty of it. This is not to be understood as western hegemony, as if western music is to be understood as the pinnacle of achievement. It is about sharing something which is beautiful, and beauty can indeed bring people together. In fact, the great Russian writer, Dostoevsky, who was a Christian, once said, “Beauty will save the world.” While the dogma of the church will not go that far, certainly the church has taught that beauty can be a pathway toward God, a journey into the heart of God---though like all pathways, it has its pitfalls and is neither an infallible guide nor an assured pathway. After all, we should never forget that some of the Nazi leaders could weep over the exquisite beauty of a Beethoven violin sonata and then return to the evil business of murdering Jews.
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
Dear Friends,
In the first chapter of John’s Gospel, as Jesus was going around Galilee choosing disciples, Philip told Nathanael that he should “come and see” the one about whom Moses and the prophets wrote. “He is from Nazareth,” Philip said, and Nathanael’s response was, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nazareth in Jesus’ day was a small, secluded, easy to ignore village, so Nathanael’s question was not completely out of line. And today, what is Nazareth like? For one thing it is quite colorful with numerous spice shops, olive presses and distinctive cuisine. It is also the largest Arab city in Israel with 60% of its inhabitants Muslim and about 40% Christian. Apparently, very few Jews live in Nazareth. !
Last year an interesting liturgy festival was held there, the brainchild of an Arab Christian citizen, whose dream it has been to bring western classical music to the Arabs living in Galilee and beyond in the rest of Israel. When Nabeel Abboud Ashkar and his brother, Saleem, were growing up, their parents, who were lovers of western classical music, made sure their sons had lessons in piano and the violin. Saleem turned out to be a piano prodigy, playing a Mozart concerto at the age of ten with the Haifa Symphony Orchestra. At 17 he played in Chicago with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and at 22 he was in Carnegie Hall. His brother’s musical career, however, was not in a straight line. Nabeel studied both physics and music at the university, finally joining an orchestra in Spain, whose goal was to bring young Israelis and Arabs together to play classical music in some of the greatest concert halls in the world. In 2006 he returned to Nazareth with the goal of establishing the city’s first classical music conservatory.
The conservatory began with 25 students, but by the end of the first year it had nearly doubled in size. The students were at first only Muslim and Christian, but eventually Jewish students also joined. He then took some 8 and 9 year old students, who had been playing their instruments for less than three years to a competition in Tel Avi. To enter the competition the students were supposed to have been studying for five years, but such details did not stop Nabeel. And the result was that ten of his students won prizes. When the jury asked where the students were from, and they answered, “Nazareth,” there was shock. In fact, the question was asked a second time, because they could not believe they had heard correctly. I guess some things never change. The suspicion is still that nothing this good could ever come out of Nazareth! Yet, to the contrary, much good has been coming out of Nazareth. Two of the conservatory students won first prize in a violin competition in Tel Avi. The result of all this success has been the expansion of the program to other parts of Israel with the intention of getting Arab and Jewish students to study and play together.
The Festival of Liturgy, which took place in Nazareth last year, began with a concert by a choir from Germany, which sang a variety of sacred music from Tallis to Brahms and Britten. It also included some Jewish music and in the future the hope is to include Muslim liturgical music as well. The aim of the festival is to bring all kinds of people together to experience great music while celebrating the city of Nazareth and its cultural and religious diversity. Though much of the music was Christian, by no means is the Festival intended for Christians only. In fact, the Festival was supported by Muslim, Jewish and Christian business owners, and over half the attendees were Jews from all over Israel while the rest were Christians and Muslims from Nazareth.
When people of different backgrounds come together to study and play music, something very special happens. Deep bonds grow because they share a love for the music, and they want others to experience the sheer beauty of it. So, it is more than the enjoyment of playing together, as important as that is. It is also the experience of playing for other people, inviting others into the musical experience, which for many people was completely new. Most had never heard Mozart’s Mass in C Minor or Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols. And people were deeply moved by the sheer and powerful beauty of it. This is not to be understood as western hegemony, as if western music is to be understood as the pinnacle of achievement. It is about sharing something which is beautiful, and beauty can indeed bring people together. In fact, the great Russian writer, Dostoevsky, who was a Christian, once said, “Beauty will save the world.” While the dogma of the church will not go that far, certainly the church has taught that beauty can be a pathway toward God, a journey into the heart of God---though like all pathways, it has its pitfalls and is neither an infallible guide nor an assured pathway. After all, we should never forget that some of the Nazi leaders could weep over the exquisite beauty of a Beethoven violin sonata and then return to the evil business of murdering Jews.
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
September 9, 2020
When I was growing up in the 50’s and 60’s, there was this great Chevrolet ad on television, showing a family driving across the country in their new Chevrolet, while the song played in the background, “See the USA, in your Chevrolet, America is asking you to buy.” I loved that ad, because the thought of traveling across the country and seeing all these different places was so exciting to me. Those were the decades of the great American road trip. When families did travel, the kids were piled into the car (often a station wagon) and away they went! No one ever flew; at least I never knew anyone. Flying was far too expensive, and back then family size was larger than today. What middle class family could comfortably afford to buy plane tickets for 3, 4, 5 or even 6 kids plus parents? So, yes, people drove. My family never went on a trip across the country, but we did visit New York City, the Finger Lakes and Lake George. I was very envious of families who drove all the way to California to see Disney Land or to Wyoming to visit Yellowstone National Park. My parents said those options were too expensive for us, and so my siblings and I had to be satisfied with trips closer to home.
You may not realize it, but this summer became once again the summer of the road trip. Even families who could afford the plane fare were not about to fly, so people decided to drive to the places they wanted to visit. And many of them drove RV’s. The RV rental market hit the roof, because not only did people not want to fly, but they also did not want to spend time in hotels or motels, not with Covid-19 as the threat. So here they were, driving across the country in vehicles with which they were not very comfortable, and along the way some very useful and interesting things did happen.
First of all, these newbies received a lot of help and support from people who had been driving RV’s for years. Some couples complained that the RV came with a manual, and that was all the instruction they managed to get. No one at the rental place was interested in helping you figure out what to do, but if you managed to make it through the day and arrived at your park for the night, there were always plenty of people, willing to help.
Secondly, everyone in the RV parks seemed to have the same desire: they all wanted to forget the pandemic and just capture a feeling of normalcy. And by and large, many managed to achieve this. Rather than listening to the news or reading it on their tablets and phones, they sat outside with other people and they talked about, well, a variety of topics. When it seemed as if someone were getting dangerously close to a controversial subject, someone else would have the good sense to point out the beauty of the night sky, studded with stars and planets across a wide band of magnificent darkness. There were always some city people among the group, and they inevitably marveled how gorgeous the sky was. Light pollution in the city is the norm, and so it is all too easy to forget how stunning the night sky can be.
Some of the road trips were out west, across the Continental Divide, and especially for people who had never driven a RV before, there was the shock of how slowly the vehicles took the hills and mountains. “I would put the pedal to the floor, someone complained, the engine would roar, and the speedometer would remain the same. We just crawled along.” The more experienced drivers would just laugh. Yet there was a lesson in the slowness---more time to look.
In hours the riders passed through four different kinds of landscapes: from lightly tanned foothills to rock strewn canyons to spruce rich mountainsides, cresting at 11,000 feet, then to alpine meadows, filled with aspens, swaying in the wind. A couple from Massachusetts, looking at the vast landscape spread like a delicious meal before their eyes, could not believe they were somewhere else beside their house where they had been in lock down mode for many months. “So, there really is a big world out there, they mused! Indeed, there is.
Someone, who forty years before had visited Wyoming with her family, suddenly had an experience of
déjà vu. There she was with her husband, heading up Route 89 through Wyoming’s Star Valley, when suddenly she recalled the experience decades before. She remembered shooting baskets on a dirt court with a cowboy at a dude ranch. She remembered the campground where she met an old man, traveling all alone in a makeshift van, who sat with her for what seemed like forever, explaining the difference in fishing rods. And finally, she recalled the air show she saw in Afton, all these biplanes climbing straight up toward the sky before sliding downward, tumbling and looping in the most impossible of movements. And there, forty years later, were planes, sitting on a runway, ready to put on a show. She sent a picture of the planes to her father back in Massachusetts. “Dad,” she wrote, somethings never change.
People on the road wanted a sense of normalcy; they wanted to forget, at least for a while. But they received so much more---a sense of peace and quiet, solace and beauty. We need to be reminded now and then that we human beings are not the center of the story. As people traveled through the beautiful landscape, they were reminded time and time again that the land is dismissive of the pandemic, and though we should not be, still it is uplifting and even comforting to be reminded that there is far more to the world than our troubles and worries and obsessions. God is yet intent on teaching us lessons, if we have the heart, the mind, the spirit to pay heed.
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
When I was growing up in the 50’s and 60’s, there was this great Chevrolet ad on television, showing a family driving across the country in their new Chevrolet, while the song played in the background, “See the USA, in your Chevrolet, America is asking you to buy.” I loved that ad, because the thought of traveling across the country and seeing all these different places was so exciting to me. Those were the decades of the great American road trip. When families did travel, the kids were piled into the car (often a station wagon) and away they went! No one ever flew; at least I never knew anyone. Flying was far too expensive, and back then family size was larger than today. What middle class family could comfortably afford to buy plane tickets for 3, 4, 5 or even 6 kids plus parents? So, yes, people drove. My family never went on a trip across the country, but we did visit New York City, the Finger Lakes and Lake George. I was very envious of families who drove all the way to California to see Disney Land or to Wyoming to visit Yellowstone National Park. My parents said those options were too expensive for us, and so my siblings and I had to be satisfied with trips closer to home.
You may not realize it, but this summer became once again the summer of the road trip. Even families who could afford the plane fare were not about to fly, so people decided to drive to the places they wanted to visit. And many of them drove RV’s. The RV rental market hit the roof, because not only did people not want to fly, but they also did not want to spend time in hotels or motels, not with Covid-19 as the threat. So here they were, driving across the country in vehicles with which they were not very comfortable, and along the way some very useful and interesting things did happen.
First of all, these newbies received a lot of help and support from people who had been driving RV’s for years. Some couples complained that the RV came with a manual, and that was all the instruction they managed to get. No one at the rental place was interested in helping you figure out what to do, but if you managed to make it through the day and arrived at your park for the night, there were always plenty of people, willing to help.
Secondly, everyone in the RV parks seemed to have the same desire: they all wanted to forget the pandemic and just capture a feeling of normalcy. And by and large, many managed to achieve this. Rather than listening to the news or reading it on their tablets and phones, they sat outside with other people and they talked about, well, a variety of topics. When it seemed as if someone were getting dangerously close to a controversial subject, someone else would have the good sense to point out the beauty of the night sky, studded with stars and planets across a wide band of magnificent darkness. There were always some city people among the group, and they inevitably marveled how gorgeous the sky was. Light pollution in the city is the norm, and so it is all too easy to forget how stunning the night sky can be.
Some of the road trips were out west, across the Continental Divide, and especially for people who had never driven a RV before, there was the shock of how slowly the vehicles took the hills and mountains. “I would put the pedal to the floor, someone complained, the engine would roar, and the speedometer would remain the same. We just crawled along.” The more experienced drivers would just laugh. Yet there was a lesson in the slowness---more time to look.
In hours the riders passed through four different kinds of landscapes: from lightly tanned foothills to rock strewn canyons to spruce rich mountainsides, cresting at 11,000 feet, then to alpine meadows, filled with aspens, swaying in the wind. A couple from Massachusetts, looking at the vast landscape spread like a delicious meal before their eyes, could not believe they were somewhere else beside their house where they had been in lock down mode for many months. “So, there really is a big world out there, they mused! Indeed, there is.
Someone, who forty years before had visited Wyoming with her family, suddenly had an experience of
déjà vu. There she was with her husband, heading up Route 89 through Wyoming’s Star Valley, when suddenly she recalled the experience decades before. She remembered shooting baskets on a dirt court with a cowboy at a dude ranch. She remembered the campground where she met an old man, traveling all alone in a makeshift van, who sat with her for what seemed like forever, explaining the difference in fishing rods. And finally, she recalled the air show she saw in Afton, all these biplanes climbing straight up toward the sky before sliding downward, tumbling and looping in the most impossible of movements. And there, forty years later, were planes, sitting on a runway, ready to put on a show. She sent a picture of the planes to her father back in Massachusetts. “Dad,” she wrote, somethings never change.
People on the road wanted a sense of normalcy; they wanted to forget, at least for a while. But they received so much more---a sense of peace and quiet, solace and beauty. We need to be reminded now and then that we human beings are not the center of the story. As people traveled through the beautiful landscape, they were reminded time and time again that the land is dismissive of the pandemic, and though we should not be, still it is uplifting and even comforting to be reminded that there is far more to the world than our troubles and worries and obsessions. God is yet intent on teaching us lessons, if we have the heart, the mind, the spirit to pay heed.
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
THE COMMAND IS: FORGIVE by Rev. Dr. Sandra L. Olsen 9/13/2020
Matthew 18: 21-25
On the 25th Anniversary of the Rwandan massacre, a minister I know gathered some images of the victims of the violence sitting or standing in proximity to the perpetrators of the violence. She showed these images during her sermon on forgiveness. How is it possible, she asked her congregation, for victims to sit near those who had committed such atrocities? And how is that the guilty could come and be among those whom they had so grievously harmed?
Jacques Derrida, a French philosopher, said that on an institutional level, it is not possible. “True forgiveness, he said, “forgives only the unforgivable and that require something no human institution, no court of law or government can offer.” According to Derrida, and there are many who share this view, forgiveness requires personal encounter, and so in the personal encounter, the impossible actually can become not only possible, but also actual. People can forgive, even what is unforgivable.
Forgiveness is at the heart of the Christian message with stories and parables scattered throughout the four gospels. And, of course, our imaginations are seared by the image of the dying, crucified Jesus, who in Luke’s gospel, commands God to forgive: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Our gospel lesson for today from the 18th chapter of Matthew emphasizes the necessity of forgiveness. Peter directly put the question to Jesus: How many times must I forgive—seven times? The number seven is critical here, because quite frankly three would have been a very reasonable offer, according to Jewish law. After three times, as the perpetrator, you are out, and as the one who has been sinned against, you are released from the obligation to forgive.
So, when Peter asked, “Should I forgive 7 times,” that number was beyond normal expectations. Seven was understood to be a number of completeness: six days of creation, but rest on the seventh day; the seven churches mentioned in the Book of Revelation, and seven-fold vengeance, alluded to in the Old Testament. But Jesus did not stop at 7; it’s 77 times, or in some translations 7 times 70. This latter number, by the way, is a reference to a story in Genesis, where a character named Lamech had no intention of forgiving his enemies and boasted that he would avenge himself 77 times against anyone who dared to attack him. And so, Jesus was essentially saying, “Be the opposite of Lamech. Your forgiveness should be as unrelenting as Lamech’s vengeance.”
After the exchange between Peter and Jesus, we then move to a story about a master and his slave or a king and his servant. The slave owes an extravagant sum of money. Ten thousand talents in today’s economy translate into billions of dollars, so there is simply no way the slave could have repaid his master. Knowing the impossibility of repayment, the master or king showed mercy and forgave the entire debt. But the slave failed to do the same. While a much smaller amount of money is owed him---payment for about 100 days of labor--- he had the debtor thrown into prison. The master was then told what the slave had done, and lest you think of this as tattling, this parable comes immediately after a section which deals directly with sinful behavior. Ignoring sin is precisely what Jesus had just instructed his people NOT to do, so bringing the sin to light is exactly what was required.
But then we get this harsh picture of the unforgiving slave being thrown into prison, where he was tortured. Now this is not meant to be a literal description about how God will deal with persons who fail to live up to the divine command to forgive. This is not an argument for the everlasting punishment of hell, which makes God guilty of the failure to forgive. We are dealing here with hyperbole; Jesus is shown exaggerating to get his point across. But there is something very spiritually and psychologically accurate about what happens when we hang on to our anger and hurts, when we refuse or are unable to forgive. Bitterness, anger and hurt do create a kind of prison for us, where we are tortured by memories that plague and haunt us. There are people who have no desire to forgive, but there are others, who want to forgive and yet cannot do so. They feel trapped, imprisoned, tortured by their anger.
I remember very clearly when I was a student in divinity school, doing my required unit of clinical pastoral education at Deaconess Hospital in Boston. On the heart unit I met this woman, whose 10 year old son had been killed by a drunk driver while the boy was walking to school. When I first met the mother, I thought the incident had recently happened, so visceral was her anger and rage. But later I learned the sad truth: Her son had been killed 15 years before, and though she said she wanted to forgive the driver of the car, who had served 10 years in prison, she simply could not. “I even went to visit him in prison,” she confessed, “but all I felt was this raging hate. I am ashamed to admit it, but now I still consumed by that same hatred. I cannot let go, and I do not understand why.” Her heart was not only literally ill, but also symbolically so. She was stuck, locked in prison, and she did not know how to open the door.
This is precisely why many Christian theologians and philosophers speak of the impossibility of forgiveness. It is not something we can necessarily achieve on our own, because it does go against the human grain. We can make ourselves do certain things, that is, behave in certain ways. We can be polite and refuse to extract vengeance, but we cannot force the heart to feel what it does not feel. And so, we suffer, and our hearts become smaller and tighter as we live in a prison from which there seems to be no escape.
Christians speak of the divine in-flowing of grace, forgiveness as a gift that comes from God. It is always a question how much power God uses to overcome human resistance. Is God’s grace truly irresistible as the early Calvinists would say? Some say yes; others say no, but who among us really knows? What we do know is that when we see people who live an ethic of forgiveness, we are deeply moved.
Lyndon Harris was an Episcopal priest, who worked at St. Paul’s Chapel, directly across the street from the World Trade Center. For nearly a year after 9/11, he was on the scene, supporting those who were working to clean up the sit, meeting with people whose loved ones had been killed, trying to give them comfort as well as hope. But then it all came crashing down. He found himself in a dark valley of anger and depression, and soon he lost his marriage, his career and almost his sanity. For some years he lived in darkness. And what finally brought him to the light? He admits his healing was a mystery, but he claims it eventually came through the mercy of God and the love and support of friends. “I finally learned,” he said, what Nelson Mandela had taught. “Not forgiving is like drinking poison and waiting for your enemy to die.”
In March 2002, barely 6 months after the collapse of the Twin Towers, a firefighter found in all the rubble some pages from the Gospel of Matthew, fused on a hunk of metal. They were the words from The Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus commands love of enemies. When the firefighter found them, he just stood there, transfixed, and then he began to weep before falling to his knees. A woman by the name of Alexandra Asseily, who has helped to plant Memory Gardens in places of great pain, said, “Forgiveness allows us to actually let go of the pain in the memory, and if we let go of the pain in the memory, we can have the memory, but it doesn’t control us.”
Here lies both the question and the mystery: how to forgive so that we can let go of the pain in the memory. Some will say, “The desire is enough; if the desire is there, the release into forgiveness will finally follow.” Others will say, human desire is never enough. Grace, which means in this case, the power of God to change us and lead us, is finally what allows us to forgive. As controlling as we human beings often are, we cannot create or control grace. We can only hope, pray and wait for it to come, and when it comes, be grateful that it has entered our hearts and our lives, making us new beings in Jesus Christ.
Matthew 18: 21-25
On the 25th Anniversary of the Rwandan massacre, a minister I know gathered some images of the victims of the violence sitting or standing in proximity to the perpetrators of the violence. She showed these images during her sermon on forgiveness. How is it possible, she asked her congregation, for victims to sit near those who had committed such atrocities? And how is that the guilty could come and be among those whom they had so grievously harmed?
Jacques Derrida, a French philosopher, said that on an institutional level, it is not possible. “True forgiveness, he said, “forgives only the unforgivable and that require something no human institution, no court of law or government can offer.” According to Derrida, and there are many who share this view, forgiveness requires personal encounter, and so in the personal encounter, the impossible actually can become not only possible, but also actual. People can forgive, even what is unforgivable.
Forgiveness is at the heart of the Christian message with stories and parables scattered throughout the four gospels. And, of course, our imaginations are seared by the image of the dying, crucified Jesus, who in Luke’s gospel, commands God to forgive: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Our gospel lesson for today from the 18th chapter of Matthew emphasizes the necessity of forgiveness. Peter directly put the question to Jesus: How many times must I forgive—seven times? The number seven is critical here, because quite frankly three would have been a very reasonable offer, according to Jewish law. After three times, as the perpetrator, you are out, and as the one who has been sinned against, you are released from the obligation to forgive.
So, when Peter asked, “Should I forgive 7 times,” that number was beyond normal expectations. Seven was understood to be a number of completeness: six days of creation, but rest on the seventh day; the seven churches mentioned in the Book of Revelation, and seven-fold vengeance, alluded to in the Old Testament. But Jesus did not stop at 7; it’s 77 times, or in some translations 7 times 70. This latter number, by the way, is a reference to a story in Genesis, where a character named Lamech had no intention of forgiving his enemies and boasted that he would avenge himself 77 times against anyone who dared to attack him. And so, Jesus was essentially saying, “Be the opposite of Lamech. Your forgiveness should be as unrelenting as Lamech’s vengeance.”
After the exchange between Peter and Jesus, we then move to a story about a master and his slave or a king and his servant. The slave owes an extravagant sum of money. Ten thousand talents in today’s economy translate into billions of dollars, so there is simply no way the slave could have repaid his master. Knowing the impossibility of repayment, the master or king showed mercy and forgave the entire debt. But the slave failed to do the same. While a much smaller amount of money is owed him---payment for about 100 days of labor--- he had the debtor thrown into prison. The master was then told what the slave had done, and lest you think of this as tattling, this parable comes immediately after a section which deals directly with sinful behavior. Ignoring sin is precisely what Jesus had just instructed his people NOT to do, so bringing the sin to light is exactly what was required.
But then we get this harsh picture of the unforgiving slave being thrown into prison, where he was tortured. Now this is not meant to be a literal description about how God will deal with persons who fail to live up to the divine command to forgive. This is not an argument for the everlasting punishment of hell, which makes God guilty of the failure to forgive. We are dealing here with hyperbole; Jesus is shown exaggerating to get his point across. But there is something very spiritually and psychologically accurate about what happens when we hang on to our anger and hurts, when we refuse or are unable to forgive. Bitterness, anger and hurt do create a kind of prison for us, where we are tortured by memories that plague and haunt us. There are people who have no desire to forgive, but there are others, who want to forgive and yet cannot do so. They feel trapped, imprisoned, tortured by their anger.
I remember very clearly when I was a student in divinity school, doing my required unit of clinical pastoral education at Deaconess Hospital in Boston. On the heart unit I met this woman, whose 10 year old son had been killed by a drunk driver while the boy was walking to school. When I first met the mother, I thought the incident had recently happened, so visceral was her anger and rage. But later I learned the sad truth: Her son had been killed 15 years before, and though she said she wanted to forgive the driver of the car, who had served 10 years in prison, she simply could not. “I even went to visit him in prison,” she confessed, “but all I felt was this raging hate. I am ashamed to admit it, but now I still consumed by that same hatred. I cannot let go, and I do not understand why.” Her heart was not only literally ill, but also symbolically so. She was stuck, locked in prison, and she did not know how to open the door.
This is precisely why many Christian theologians and philosophers speak of the impossibility of forgiveness. It is not something we can necessarily achieve on our own, because it does go against the human grain. We can make ourselves do certain things, that is, behave in certain ways. We can be polite and refuse to extract vengeance, but we cannot force the heart to feel what it does not feel. And so, we suffer, and our hearts become smaller and tighter as we live in a prison from which there seems to be no escape.
Christians speak of the divine in-flowing of grace, forgiveness as a gift that comes from God. It is always a question how much power God uses to overcome human resistance. Is God’s grace truly irresistible as the early Calvinists would say? Some say yes; others say no, but who among us really knows? What we do know is that when we see people who live an ethic of forgiveness, we are deeply moved.
Lyndon Harris was an Episcopal priest, who worked at St. Paul’s Chapel, directly across the street from the World Trade Center. For nearly a year after 9/11, he was on the scene, supporting those who were working to clean up the sit, meeting with people whose loved ones had been killed, trying to give them comfort as well as hope. But then it all came crashing down. He found himself in a dark valley of anger and depression, and soon he lost his marriage, his career and almost his sanity. For some years he lived in darkness. And what finally brought him to the light? He admits his healing was a mystery, but he claims it eventually came through the mercy of God and the love and support of friends. “I finally learned,” he said, what Nelson Mandela had taught. “Not forgiving is like drinking poison and waiting for your enemy to die.”
In March 2002, barely 6 months after the collapse of the Twin Towers, a firefighter found in all the rubble some pages from the Gospel of Matthew, fused on a hunk of metal. They were the words from The Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus commands love of enemies. When the firefighter found them, he just stood there, transfixed, and then he began to weep before falling to his knees. A woman by the name of Alexandra Asseily, who has helped to plant Memory Gardens in places of great pain, said, “Forgiveness allows us to actually let go of the pain in the memory, and if we let go of the pain in the memory, we can have the memory, but it doesn’t control us.”
Here lies both the question and the mystery: how to forgive so that we can let go of the pain in the memory. Some will say, “The desire is enough; if the desire is there, the release into forgiveness will finally follow.” Others will say, human desire is never enough. Grace, which means in this case, the power of God to change us and lead us, is finally what allows us to forgive. As controlling as we human beings often are, we cannot create or control grace. We can only hope, pray and wait for it to come, and when it comes, be grateful that it has entered our hearts and our lives, making us new beings in Jesus Christ.
September 2, 2020
Dear Friends,
Some years ago, the former dean of Yale Law School, Anthony Kronman, wrote a book, Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life. Kronman’s contention was that since many colleges and universities not only had a religious foundation but were also completely committed to the Western Canon consisting of the great books and ideas of Western civilization, there was a fairly strong agreement on what constituted a good life. Students would read the great classics, and classes were often ordered around questions of the good life and what it meant to be a good human being. What kind of life is most worth living? What is the good and how do we recognize it and pursue it? There was actually a hierarchy of values, and some values were treated as clearly superior to others. When students read, for example, the Greek philosophers, such as Aristotle, Socrates and Plato, it was obvious that a focus on wealth and fame is not what brings happiness and a fulfilled life. And happiness was not understood as a private state of happy feelings. A truly happy life was a connected life, a life that felt responsible to and for others, a life that recognized the public good and made contributions to it.
My undergraduate education was at the University of Chicago, where the commitment to the Great Books was unquestioned. If you were not interested in such exposure; if you did not want to take all the required courses, of which there were many, this was not the school for you. But even when I was a student, the foundations were beginning to shake. Multiculturalism was on the rise, though I don’t recall that word ever being used, and feminism was raising uncomfortable questions. I remember quite clearly the University being questioned about its choices of great books. Why, for example, were there almost no female writers on the list? Why is Harvey’s treatise on blood circulation deemed more important than Jane Austen’s writings? Now those foundations of western civilization have all but disappeared from the required curriculum. Anthony Kronman finds this to be a worrisome trend, because our democracy, our understanding of freedom and person hood and individual rights are ideas that come from the story of western civilization. This is not to say there are not other worthy things to learn from other civilizations----It was required that I take a year of a non-western civilization--- but if we ignore or reject the particular gifts of the West (while also recognizing its failings) we will not understand our past and how we have become who we are in a world that is rapidly changing. And how to we navigate wisely those changes?
Kronman’s book contends that because so many students today lack a religious foundation and an exposure to the classical questions of identity as well as life’s meaning and goals, they are finding themselves overwhelmed and confused. Now some of these feelings are simply what being young is all about. One professor said, “Students these days are told to follow their passion, but how can they possibly know what their passion is, since they are so young and inexperienced? You only know your passion as you live, make choices and then reflect upon your experiences.” And so, colleges and universities all across the country have been designing courses to help students move ahead without feeling that they have to have everything all figured out. Kids too often come to college, and they think it is all about what kind of career they want to pursue. But the really important question is, What kind of person do you want to become? And can one’s choice of job or career help that endeavor?
Yale University last year offered a new course called, “Psychology and the Good Life.” Over 1200 students enrolled, and it is now considered the most popular course on campus. At Smith College, my oldest daughter’s Alma mater, The Lazarus Center for Career Development teaches workshops called, “Getting Unstuck When You Don’t Know What’s Next.” Stanford University has something called The Stanford Life Design Lab, which creates courses that are supposed to help students approach life. As one professor said, “Life is not just about designing a job. It’s love, play, work and help. A well lived and joyful life is the goal we want to help people attain.”
Traditionally this is what religion was supposed to help people do. Jesus said he came that we might have full and abundant lives, and the stories he told were designed to raise questions and help point the way toward a fuller life. When he told the story of the Good Samaritan, for example, he was speaking to a Jewish audience, who despised the Samaritans for intermarrying with their Assyrian conquerors seven hundred years before. Both Jews and Samaritans read the same scriptures and worshiped the same God, but the Jews avoided intermarriage with other groups, and so they despised Samaritans for being impure. So, when Jesus told a story about a Jewish man helping a badly beaten Samaritan, this was not what they would have expected to hear. Jesus asked his listener who was the neighbor to the Samaritan, and when the answer came, “The one who showed mercy,” Jesus told them to go and do likewise. They understood that Jesus was holding up a different standard from the conventional one. Embedded in that story, as in so many other gospel stories, are questions of character---the kind of people we might want to become as well as the kind of people God desires us to be.
All cultures have numerous ways of helping people to understand who they are and who they might wish to become. Stories and histories are told, and wisdoms are passed on, and all this helps to build the foundations of a people’s identity. We now know that some of what we have recognized as foundational to our identity as Americans has excluded far too many people---both women and persons of color, for example. This does not mean that the foundation should be ripped to shreds, as some fear is happening, but it does mean that all of us (young and old alike) are asked to consider not only personal identities---What kind of person do we wish to become?---but also What kind of nation are we being called to become? When we honestly look at what is happening in our country right now, we should ask ourselves, What kind of people are we anyway? As Kronman’s book reminds us, we have many resources to use as we chart the way ahead, and for those of us who are Christian, the story of Jesus Christ and the stories he told are indeed foundational.
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
Dear Friends,
Some years ago, the former dean of Yale Law School, Anthony Kronman, wrote a book, Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life. Kronman’s contention was that since many colleges and universities not only had a religious foundation but were also completely committed to the Western Canon consisting of the great books and ideas of Western civilization, there was a fairly strong agreement on what constituted a good life. Students would read the great classics, and classes were often ordered around questions of the good life and what it meant to be a good human being. What kind of life is most worth living? What is the good and how do we recognize it and pursue it? There was actually a hierarchy of values, and some values were treated as clearly superior to others. When students read, for example, the Greek philosophers, such as Aristotle, Socrates and Plato, it was obvious that a focus on wealth and fame is not what brings happiness and a fulfilled life. And happiness was not understood as a private state of happy feelings. A truly happy life was a connected life, a life that felt responsible to and for others, a life that recognized the public good and made contributions to it.
My undergraduate education was at the University of Chicago, where the commitment to the Great Books was unquestioned. If you were not interested in such exposure; if you did not want to take all the required courses, of which there were many, this was not the school for you. But even when I was a student, the foundations were beginning to shake. Multiculturalism was on the rise, though I don’t recall that word ever being used, and feminism was raising uncomfortable questions. I remember quite clearly the University being questioned about its choices of great books. Why, for example, were there almost no female writers on the list? Why is Harvey’s treatise on blood circulation deemed more important than Jane Austen’s writings? Now those foundations of western civilization have all but disappeared from the required curriculum. Anthony Kronman finds this to be a worrisome trend, because our democracy, our understanding of freedom and person hood and individual rights are ideas that come from the story of western civilization. This is not to say there are not other worthy things to learn from other civilizations----It was required that I take a year of a non-western civilization--- but if we ignore or reject the particular gifts of the West (while also recognizing its failings) we will not understand our past and how we have become who we are in a world that is rapidly changing. And how to we navigate wisely those changes?
Kronman’s book contends that because so many students today lack a religious foundation and an exposure to the classical questions of identity as well as life’s meaning and goals, they are finding themselves overwhelmed and confused. Now some of these feelings are simply what being young is all about. One professor said, “Students these days are told to follow their passion, but how can they possibly know what their passion is, since they are so young and inexperienced? You only know your passion as you live, make choices and then reflect upon your experiences.” And so, colleges and universities all across the country have been designing courses to help students move ahead without feeling that they have to have everything all figured out. Kids too often come to college, and they think it is all about what kind of career they want to pursue. But the really important question is, What kind of person do you want to become? And can one’s choice of job or career help that endeavor?
Yale University last year offered a new course called, “Psychology and the Good Life.” Over 1200 students enrolled, and it is now considered the most popular course on campus. At Smith College, my oldest daughter’s Alma mater, The Lazarus Center for Career Development teaches workshops called, “Getting Unstuck When You Don’t Know What’s Next.” Stanford University has something called The Stanford Life Design Lab, which creates courses that are supposed to help students approach life. As one professor said, “Life is not just about designing a job. It’s love, play, work and help. A well lived and joyful life is the goal we want to help people attain.”
Traditionally this is what religion was supposed to help people do. Jesus said he came that we might have full and abundant lives, and the stories he told were designed to raise questions and help point the way toward a fuller life. When he told the story of the Good Samaritan, for example, he was speaking to a Jewish audience, who despised the Samaritans for intermarrying with their Assyrian conquerors seven hundred years before. Both Jews and Samaritans read the same scriptures and worshiped the same God, but the Jews avoided intermarriage with other groups, and so they despised Samaritans for being impure. So, when Jesus told a story about a Jewish man helping a badly beaten Samaritan, this was not what they would have expected to hear. Jesus asked his listener who was the neighbor to the Samaritan, and when the answer came, “The one who showed mercy,” Jesus told them to go and do likewise. They understood that Jesus was holding up a different standard from the conventional one. Embedded in that story, as in so many other gospel stories, are questions of character---the kind of people we might want to become as well as the kind of people God desires us to be.
All cultures have numerous ways of helping people to understand who they are and who they might wish to become. Stories and histories are told, and wisdoms are passed on, and all this helps to build the foundations of a people’s identity. We now know that some of what we have recognized as foundational to our identity as Americans has excluded far too many people---both women and persons of color, for example. This does not mean that the foundation should be ripped to shreds, as some fear is happening, but it does mean that all of us (young and old alike) are asked to consider not only personal identities---What kind of person do we wish to become?---but also What kind of nation are we being called to become? When we honestly look at what is happening in our country right now, we should ask ourselves, What kind of people are we anyway? As Kronman’s book reminds us, we have many resources to use as we chart the way ahead, and for those of us who are Christian, the story of Jesus Christ and the stories he told are indeed foundational.
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
Work and Leisure by Rev. Dr. Sandra L. Olsen 9/6/2020
Genesis 3: 8-19
Psalm 46
A professor in Amsterdam, who studies patterns of work and leisure, told of a conversation she had with the manager of an American company, which had a division in Amsterdam. The manager was American and had only been at his job for two weeks. It was 8 on a Friday evening, and he had an important shipment to get out on Monday, so he called his assistant at home, asking her to contact some of the workers so they could get things done over the week end. The first thing the assistant told her boss was, “I don’t work on week-ends, and I do not expect to be called at home.”
“Well, excuse me,” her boss said,” but I am the new manager here, and we are a company competing in the global economy. We have an important shipment to get out, and I appreciate people who are team players.”
“O.K.,” she said, “I can do what you ask, but under Dutch law, you will have to pay all of us double time for unscheduled overtime, week end work. But none of this is necessary; we will get the job done on Monday.”
“Oh forget it,” the frustrated manager retorted, and then he hung up. On Monday morning his assistant and her team all showed up, ready to do the work. The shipment was sent on time, and the manager admitted to the professor that although it took him time to change, he eventually did. Though his Dutch workers worked less hours than their American counterparts, the work did get done. And the manager admitted that his life was better; his family was happier, and he was less anxious about his work.
Until the recession of 2008, when work patterns did alter, Americans worked some of the longest hours in the post industrial world. Why? Well, some might say it is simple greed, made palatable by a Protestant heritage that has celebrated individualism at the expense of the common good. It is true that Protestantism made friends with capitalism in a way that Roman Catholicism never did. Some have argued that the original Calvinist idea that election to salvation is limited---only for the elect--- created a deep anxiety about the state of one’s soul, and so, the argument goes, people worked harder in the marketplace, piling up success to prove that they were among the elect, destined for salvation.
We are descendants of the Puritans, and we all know the popular image of the Puritan as a humorless workaholic, disdaining pleasure and leisure. While it is true that Puritans disapproved of idleness, they made a very sharp distinction between leisure and idleness. Idleness was understood as an activity with no purpose beyond the activity---work for the sake of work, or work for the sake of amassing wealth great wealth, and the reason it was considered dangerous was because its aim was too low---far, far below the goodness God desires for God’s people. Donald Trump in his book, The Art of the Deal, describes a day filled with telephone calls and meetings, lasting no more than a few minutes.
“I don’t do it for money,” he wrote. “I do it to do it.” And I would guess that there are many financially successful people like this. They do it for the challenge, to win in a competitive race, and from the Puritan perspective, this is idleness, no matter how many hours or how hard they work. Idleness is work whose aims are far too low.
Leisure is something different, something we see in the story of Adam and Eve before the fall---the delight of tilling and keeping the garden with no anxiety about their work. It is only after their disobedience, when they are expelled from the Garden, that work becomes drudgery. And yet, the Puritans celebrated leisure, and when rightly pursued, leisure allows human beings to step beyond the working world and make contact with life giving forces that renew and remake us. In Psalm 46, we read the line, “Be still and know that I am God,” or as another translation has it: “Be at leisure and know that I am God.” In other words, there is something only stillness and leisure can do for us and bring to us. Our spirits cannot flourish without time for stillness. We are more than what we do for a living, and yet there are many, many people whose labor and work are the pivotal points of their identity.
I remember when my father retired at age 63. He spent his life working in business and banking as a middle level manager, something he hated, so retirement for him was liberation. He was a voracious reader and a lover of classical music, and that is what he spent his retirement years doing---reading and listening to music. My parents moved to a retirement community in New Jersey, and I recall my father complaining about all these men who would go on and on about their former work---how important their contribution had been, how much they were needed. My father, never known for his patience, became tired of this prattle as he called it, and finally blurted out, “Aren’t you guys anything more than your former jobs?” Well, Olsen, one man almost sneered, and what are you? I am what I think, listen to and read, my father shot back. My job was what I did to earn a living---that was all it ever was.
But that really was not true. His job had more power over him than he would admit. Growing up with a father who hated his job made a deep impression on my siblings and me. Let’s face it: you spend a lot of time working, and if you hate your job, it does something to you. Some people cope with this better than others, but in my father’s case, it left him short tempered, frustrated and unhappy. He worked to make a living---to support my mother and us four kids in a middle class life style. But for him that was never enough. He would have liked his work to provide him with more----more meaning and enjoyment.
And, of course, so would most people. When I married my husband, I obviously got to know his father, who, unlike my own father, loved his work. My father in law was a professor at Harvard for 48 years in the graduate School of Education, and he often said that he was paid too much for doing what he loved. “They should pay the garbage collector more than they pay me,” he used to say. He wasn’t kidding; he would have done his job for a lot less money, because he received from his job a great deal more than monetary compensation.
Work is not everything; it does not define the whole person, but it does matter. Work gives us the means of our sustenance, and in these difficult days, when so many have lost their jobs, taking work for granted is not something many people can afford to do.
So yes, work matters, because it also affords people a measure of dignity. Most people want to feel that their labor makes some kind of contribution; that it is not for nothing.
I have a friend, who for some years, though well paid for her work was depressed about it, because she dealt in junk mail. “I get all this stuff out,” she said to me once, “and I do it efficiently and even cheaply for which I am rewarded, but what am I really contributing? Nothing, but junk!”
Tomorrow is Labor Day, a day we are called to honor the labor that people do. Most Americans today have no knowledge that in 1894, six days after the Pullman Strike ended, Congress unanimously made Labor Day a national holiday. President Grover Cleveland was smarting from criticism about his decision to call out federal troops to quell the strike, and he did not want to be viewed as labor’s enemy. And so, should none of us: As our final hymn proclaims, “Come, labor on, claim the high calling angels cannot share.”
Genesis 3: 8-19
Psalm 46
A professor in Amsterdam, who studies patterns of work and leisure, told of a conversation she had with the manager of an American company, which had a division in Amsterdam. The manager was American and had only been at his job for two weeks. It was 8 on a Friday evening, and he had an important shipment to get out on Monday, so he called his assistant at home, asking her to contact some of the workers so they could get things done over the week end. The first thing the assistant told her boss was, “I don’t work on week-ends, and I do not expect to be called at home.”
“Well, excuse me,” her boss said,” but I am the new manager here, and we are a company competing in the global economy. We have an important shipment to get out, and I appreciate people who are team players.”
“O.K.,” she said, “I can do what you ask, but under Dutch law, you will have to pay all of us double time for unscheduled overtime, week end work. But none of this is necessary; we will get the job done on Monday.”
“Oh forget it,” the frustrated manager retorted, and then he hung up. On Monday morning his assistant and her team all showed up, ready to do the work. The shipment was sent on time, and the manager admitted to the professor that although it took him time to change, he eventually did. Though his Dutch workers worked less hours than their American counterparts, the work did get done. And the manager admitted that his life was better; his family was happier, and he was less anxious about his work.
Until the recession of 2008, when work patterns did alter, Americans worked some of the longest hours in the post industrial world. Why? Well, some might say it is simple greed, made palatable by a Protestant heritage that has celebrated individualism at the expense of the common good. It is true that Protestantism made friends with capitalism in a way that Roman Catholicism never did. Some have argued that the original Calvinist idea that election to salvation is limited---only for the elect--- created a deep anxiety about the state of one’s soul, and so, the argument goes, people worked harder in the marketplace, piling up success to prove that they were among the elect, destined for salvation.
We are descendants of the Puritans, and we all know the popular image of the Puritan as a humorless workaholic, disdaining pleasure and leisure. While it is true that Puritans disapproved of idleness, they made a very sharp distinction between leisure and idleness. Idleness was understood as an activity with no purpose beyond the activity---work for the sake of work, or work for the sake of amassing wealth great wealth, and the reason it was considered dangerous was because its aim was too low---far, far below the goodness God desires for God’s people. Donald Trump in his book, The Art of the Deal, describes a day filled with telephone calls and meetings, lasting no more than a few minutes.
“I don’t do it for money,” he wrote. “I do it to do it.” And I would guess that there are many financially successful people like this. They do it for the challenge, to win in a competitive race, and from the Puritan perspective, this is idleness, no matter how many hours or how hard they work. Idleness is work whose aims are far too low.
Leisure is something different, something we see in the story of Adam and Eve before the fall---the delight of tilling and keeping the garden with no anxiety about their work. It is only after their disobedience, when they are expelled from the Garden, that work becomes drudgery. And yet, the Puritans celebrated leisure, and when rightly pursued, leisure allows human beings to step beyond the working world and make contact with life giving forces that renew and remake us. In Psalm 46, we read the line, “Be still and know that I am God,” or as another translation has it: “Be at leisure and know that I am God.” In other words, there is something only stillness and leisure can do for us and bring to us. Our spirits cannot flourish without time for stillness. We are more than what we do for a living, and yet there are many, many people whose labor and work are the pivotal points of their identity.
I remember when my father retired at age 63. He spent his life working in business and banking as a middle level manager, something he hated, so retirement for him was liberation. He was a voracious reader and a lover of classical music, and that is what he spent his retirement years doing---reading and listening to music. My parents moved to a retirement community in New Jersey, and I recall my father complaining about all these men who would go on and on about their former work---how important their contribution had been, how much they were needed. My father, never known for his patience, became tired of this prattle as he called it, and finally blurted out, “Aren’t you guys anything more than your former jobs?” Well, Olsen, one man almost sneered, and what are you? I am what I think, listen to and read, my father shot back. My job was what I did to earn a living---that was all it ever was.
But that really was not true. His job had more power over him than he would admit. Growing up with a father who hated his job made a deep impression on my siblings and me. Let’s face it: you spend a lot of time working, and if you hate your job, it does something to you. Some people cope with this better than others, but in my father’s case, it left him short tempered, frustrated and unhappy. He worked to make a living---to support my mother and us four kids in a middle class life style. But for him that was never enough. He would have liked his work to provide him with more----more meaning and enjoyment.
And, of course, so would most people. When I married my husband, I obviously got to know his father, who, unlike my own father, loved his work. My father in law was a professor at Harvard for 48 years in the graduate School of Education, and he often said that he was paid too much for doing what he loved. “They should pay the garbage collector more than they pay me,” he used to say. He wasn’t kidding; he would have done his job for a lot less money, because he received from his job a great deal more than monetary compensation.
Work is not everything; it does not define the whole person, but it does matter. Work gives us the means of our sustenance, and in these difficult days, when so many have lost their jobs, taking work for granted is not something many people can afford to do.
So yes, work matters, because it also affords people a measure of dignity. Most people want to feel that their labor makes some kind of contribution; that it is not for nothing.
I have a friend, who for some years, though well paid for her work was depressed about it, because she dealt in junk mail. “I get all this stuff out,” she said to me once, “and I do it efficiently and even cheaply for which I am rewarded, but what am I really contributing? Nothing, but junk!”
Tomorrow is Labor Day, a day we are called to honor the labor that people do. Most Americans today have no knowledge that in 1894, six days after the Pullman Strike ended, Congress unanimously made Labor Day a national holiday. President Grover Cleveland was smarting from criticism about his decision to call out federal troops to quell the strike, and he did not want to be viewed as labor’s enemy. And so, should none of us: As our final hymn proclaims, “Come, labor on, claim the high calling angels cannot share.”
August 26, 2020
I have a t-shirt with a quote from Bryan Stevenson, We Are More Than the Worst Thing We Have Ever Done. Stevenson is a Harvard Law School trained lawyer, who works on behalf of incarcerated Black people on death row. His book, Just Mercy, is a moving, sometimes harrowing read about his efforts to help wrongly convicted Black people of capital crimes. I literally had to put the book down a number of times, because it was so upsetting---prosecutors willfully and knowingly calling for the death penalty on persons they either knew to be innocent or had totally inadequate proof of guilt. I was thinking about Stevenson’s quote when the mail arrived with a copy of The Christian Science Monitor, a weekly news periodical.
The lead story was called, Breaking Good, about helping lifers out on parole. The story began with a man named Louie Hammonds, a lifer in Pelican Bay State Prison, a super-max prison in California. Hammonds was hardly a nice guy. He had been a gang leader, finally convicted for shooting a man in a bar seven times. “Lock him up and throw away the key” was the attitude everyone had toward him, and in all honesty, Hammonds did not do much to change their minds. But one day, while shackled, a prison guard bent down to tie one of his shoes. “I don’t want you to trip and fall down,” the guard said. Does not sound like much, does it? I mean the act would hardly get the compassion award of the year, and yet for Hammonds, who was not accustomed to acts of kindness being directed his way, was overcome by the guard’s act. “I was humbled,” he said. “That guard showed me his humanity, and even gave some of that humanity to me.” And that constituted a new beginning for him. He began to think differently.
Who gets offered redemption? That question did not emerge from a minister or the church. It came from someone working inside prison walls in the state of California and wondering about the 34,000 plus persons, sentenced to life in prison. California, by the way, has more lifers than any other PLACE on the face of this earth. It has not escaped the notice of American prison officials that other democratic nations do not mete out such long prison sentences. Norway, for example, where Anders Breivik in 2011 went on a shooting and bombing spree at an international camp, killing 77 people, was sentenced to only 21 years, the maximum allowed in Norway. His prison is outside Oslo, and he is housed in a three room suite with exercise equipment, a television and computer with no internet connection. While many Americans are outraged when prisoners are treated humanely, Norway officials say, “If you want people to learn to be decent, you have to treat them decently, and locking people up with nothing to do, only grows resentment and rage.” As one American prison official put it, “If you are in prison for life, what is the motivation to change? Why do you want to try to be a better person, if there is no hope for you at all---just more of the same?”
And so, California has an experimental program, running on the premise that ex-prisoners, who have successfully navigated life outside of prison, can help lifers adjust to parole. Since 2010 6000 lifers in California have been released, and if they want to stay out of prison, they must participate in the program, which meets regularly for conversation, reflection, support and counseling. The ex-prisoners, who run the conversations, are pretty good at cutting through all the bull, and they are not afraid to call people on their dishonesty or self-delusion. People talk about the importance of self-love and respect for others, why such things matter, and how such concerns can actually change lives. Lifers say that such topics were never on their minds before. They never considered what kind of person they might wish to become. They never considered what impact their actions might have on other human beings and why they should consider other people at all.
There is no magic to the program and conversation alone is never the key. The simple truth is that research indicates that people tend to age out of criminality and that lifers released from prison after serving many decades are rarely at risk for repeating a life of crime. A recent study out of New Jersey found only a 1.14% recidivism rate in a study of juveniles who had been sentenced to life imprisonment and then released many decades later. Drug addiction and alcoholism cannot claim success anywhere near that rate.
Who gets offered redemption? When it comes to life outside prison, few are offered another chance. Tough decisions are made about people and whether or not they have the capacity to learn and change and stay out of prison. Prison is normally not the place to grow emotionally, and when people are released after being incarcerated for 30 or 40 years, a 50 or 60 year old man may have the emotional maturity of the 21 year old he was when he became an inmate. But, if there is a deep desire to stay out of prison, the chance for a new beginning may indeed grow into success. What is desired does matter, and age brings some change, even if it is the lack of energy to commit crime.
Some time after the George Floyd murder, I was listening to a woman talk about punishment. She was rightfully upset that some police do terrible things with no consequence. But then she said something that struck me hard. She had some friends, who had lived good, exemplary lives and then one night in separate incidents, they got drunk, fatally killed people in a car accident and now are in prison. “And that is right.” She said. “That is where they should be. They need to be punished. Punishment is what is needed.”
But to what end is punishment? If punishment is the end point, we end up with not only a bloated prison population, but also a distorted way of thinking about God and humanity. I am grateful I did not grow up with the idea that God’s final intent is to punish and that redemption is only for the fortunate few. I was taught that God not only offers redemption to all, but also works to give redemption to all.
In Dante’s brilliant masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, the lowest point in hell is not a burning pit of fire but rather a frozen block of ice. And there is Satan, upside down, encased in ice, completely unable to move. What a powerful metaphor! We are in hell, when we are frozen, when we cannot or will not change, and when we are prevented from changing, because circumstances are against us, as they are against some people. I am uplifted by the faith that proclaims, “God is never finished with us, even when everyone else gives up.” And I am also uplifted and encouraged to learn that even in some of the most horrific of circumstances there are those who will take a chance on people so many others would just lock up and throw away the key.
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
I have a t-shirt with a quote from Bryan Stevenson, We Are More Than the Worst Thing We Have Ever Done. Stevenson is a Harvard Law School trained lawyer, who works on behalf of incarcerated Black people on death row. His book, Just Mercy, is a moving, sometimes harrowing read about his efforts to help wrongly convicted Black people of capital crimes. I literally had to put the book down a number of times, because it was so upsetting---prosecutors willfully and knowingly calling for the death penalty on persons they either knew to be innocent or had totally inadequate proof of guilt. I was thinking about Stevenson’s quote when the mail arrived with a copy of The Christian Science Monitor, a weekly news periodical.
The lead story was called, Breaking Good, about helping lifers out on parole. The story began with a man named Louie Hammonds, a lifer in Pelican Bay State Prison, a super-max prison in California. Hammonds was hardly a nice guy. He had been a gang leader, finally convicted for shooting a man in a bar seven times. “Lock him up and throw away the key” was the attitude everyone had toward him, and in all honesty, Hammonds did not do much to change their minds. But one day, while shackled, a prison guard bent down to tie one of his shoes. “I don’t want you to trip and fall down,” the guard said. Does not sound like much, does it? I mean the act would hardly get the compassion award of the year, and yet for Hammonds, who was not accustomed to acts of kindness being directed his way, was overcome by the guard’s act. “I was humbled,” he said. “That guard showed me his humanity, and even gave some of that humanity to me.” And that constituted a new beginning for him. He began to think differently.
Who gets offered redemption? That question did not emerge from a minister or the church. It came from someone working inside prison walls in the state of California and wondering about the 34,000 plus persons, sentenced to life in prison. California, by the way, has more lifers than any other PLACE on the face of this earth. It has not escaped the notice of American prison officials that other democratic nations do not mete out such long prison sentences. Norway, for example, where Anders Breivik in 2011 went on a shooting and bombing spree at an international camp, killing 77 people, was sentenced to only 21 years, the maximum allowed in Norway. His prison is outside Oslo, and he is housed in a three room suite with exercise equipment, a television and computer with no internet connection. While many Americans are outraged when prisoners are treated humanely, Norway officials say, “If you want people to learn to be decent, you have to treat them decently, and locking people up with nothing to do, only grows resentment and rage.” As one American prison official put it, “If you are in prison for life, what is the motivation to change? Why do you want to try to be a better person, if there is no hope for you at all---just more of the same?”
And so, California has an experimental program, running on the premise that ex-prisoners, who have successfully navigated life outside of prison, can help lifers adjust to parole. Since 2010 6000 lifers in California have been released, and if they want to stay out of prison, they must participate in the program, which meets regularly for conversation, reflection, support and counseling. The ex-prisoners, who run the conversations, are pretty good at cutting through all the bull, and they are not afraid to call people on their dishonesty or self-delusion. People talk about the importance of self-love and respect for others, why such things matter, and how such concerns can actually change lives. Lifers say that such topics were never on their minds before. They never considered what kind of person they might wish to become. They never considered what impact their actions might have on other human beings and why they should consider other people at all.
There is no magic to the program and conversation alone is never the key. The simple truth is that research indicates that people tend to age out of criminality and that lifers released from prison after serving many decades are rarely at risk for repeating a life of crime. A recent study out of New Jersey found only a 1.14% recidivism rate in a study of juveniles who had been sentenced to life imprisonment and then released many decades later. Drug addiction and alcoholism cannot claim success anywhere near that rate.
Who gets offered redemption? When it comes to life outside prison, few are offered another chance. Tough decisions are made about people and whether or not they have the capacity to learn and change and stay out of prison. Prison is normally not the place to grow emotionally, and when people are released after being incarcerated for 30 or 40 years, a 50 or 60 year old man may have the emotional maturity of the 21 year old he was when he became an inmate. But, if there is a deep desire to stay out of prison, the chance for a new beginning may indeed grow into success. What is desired does matter, and age brings some change, even if it is the lack of energy to commit crime.
Some time after the George Floyd murder, I was listening to a woman talk about punishment. She was rightfully upset that some police do terrible things with no consequence. But then she said something that struck me hard. She had some friends, who had lived good, exemplary lives and then one night in separate incidents, they got drunk, fatally killed people in a car accident and now are in prison. “And that is right.” She said. “That is where they should be. They need to be punished. Punishment is what is needed.”
But to what end is punishment? If punishment is the end point, we end up with not only a bloated prison population, but also a distorted way of thinking about God and humanity. I am grateful I did not grow up with the idea that God’s final intent is to punish and that redemption is only for the fortunate few. I was taught that God not only offers redemption to all, but also works to give redemption to all.
In Dante’s brilliant masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, the lowest point in hell is not a burning pit of fire but rather a frozen block of ice. And there is Satan, upside down, encased in ice, completely unable to move. What a powerful metaphor! We are in hell, when we are frozen, when we cannot or will not change, and when we are prevented from changing, because circumstances are against us, as they are against some people. I am uplifted by the faith that proclaims, “God is never finished with us, even when everyone else gives up.” And I am also uplifted and encouraged to learn that even in some of the most horrific of circumstances there are those who will take a chance on people so many others would just lock up and throw away the key.
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
SURVIVAL: FOR WHAT? by Rev. Dr. Sandra L. Olsen 8/30/2020
Matthew 16: 21-28
When I was growing up, my father used to say about Jesus, “You have to wonder about a guy who picked such losers for followers. Why didn’t he choose a brighter bunch?” The Gospels writers might have wondered the same thing, because there is no doubt about it, the disciples are not portrayed in a very positive light. They are forever misunderstanding Jesus. I have to confess, Peter was never my favorite, too impulsive, all heart with very little head. Yet Peter is the disciple who rightly confesses Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, son of the Living God. All three synoptic gospels give Peter that role, though Matthew’s Gospel is the only one who puts him as the head of the church. And now in this week’s lesson, right after being praised by Jesus for recognizing the truth, Peter gets kicked in the stomach when Jesus calls him Satan. “Get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to me.” But in all honesty, who can blame Peter? We can all imagine what it feels like to be told something that feels so wrong, so out of syn with reality as we know it, that we too protest. “God forbid. This must never happen.”
A couple gallantly struggles to keep their marriage together for a number of years. They try couple’s therapy, marriage encounter; they patiently wait and hope to see if things improve, but after years of working and hoping, they are exhausted from the effort. And now the time comes when the couple must tell their three children, who are 9, 12 and 16 that their hearts are about to break apart, because the parents just can’t make a go of it. And the children have no idea what is coming: “God forbid. This must never happen!”
And what about the 30 year old who sits across from a doctor, telling her that the sore on her eyelid is inoperable cancer, and she has less than a year to live. God forbid! This must never happen.
We know, don’t we, what it is like to hear something that kicks us right smack in the stomach and wrings the heart dry. It feels so completely wrong, and yet here this other person is telling us, “This is the way it is, the way it must be.” “God forbid,” we protest. “This must not happen.”
Well, this is exactly what it must have been like for Peter. He heard something from the lips of Jesus that was crazy, so outside the orbit in which he had lived that there was no way he could accept it. And the irony for him is that this came right after he had just received praise from Jesus for having correctly identified Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. Last week we heard Jesus tell Peter that he will be the rock upon which Jesus will build the church. And now this rock is pulverized, when Jesus says, “Get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to me, for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” What an incredible put down! Peter goes from rock to stumbling block in just a few short sentences. Who wouldn’t be confused?
Now it is always important to remember when we try to understand the bible that the writer always has an agenda, a particular way of seeing and interpreting. And remember that the story is told from the perspective of looking back. And as we all know, when we look back at something, oh, the view looks quite different. We see things we did not notice before, and then there are things we saw before that drop out of the picture. They no longer seem important. Now Matthew’s Gospel was written sometime around the year 85, well after the earthly life of Jesus and after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in the year 70. With the destruction of the Temple, Judaism radically changed, from a Temple centered religion with all its ritual laws and rules of sacrifice, to a synagogue centered religion, where people met not to make sacrifice but to read, pray and ponder the meaning of the law in the new world they found themselves in. So, Judaism and Christianity were essentially siblings, growing up along side one another, each, however, with different notions of what a Messiah looked like.
The trouble with Jesus was that to the Jews he did not look like any kind of messiah they would recognize. The last thing a messiah was supposed to do was end up on a cross. A messiah was supposed to usher in a new age of peace and prosperity. A messiah was supposed to return Israel to the grandeur of its past, like the time King David ruled a United Kingdom and Solomon dispensed wisdom from the grandeur of the Temple he had built. A messiah implied power, political power as well as religious power, but here the Jews were in the year 85 with their temple destroyed and their identity humiliated by Rome. Of course, they could recognize Jesus as a wise and good teacher, a miracle worker and a healer, but messiah---not on your life!
A Messiah is supposed to sit on a throne not hang on a cross. And in Jesus’ day the cross meant something very specific. It meant you were an enemy of Rome, and Rome crucified its enemies---at least enemies, who were not Roman citizens. So, there is no denying that in Matthew’s particular context loyalty to Jesus Christ meant resistance to Rome. But the big question was: how does one resist?
It is amazing that a movement could be successfully built on the command to take up your cross and follow. Yet it worked. People flocked to Christianity, beginning at first with the poor and the dis-empowered and then the educated classes began to follow. Now because we do have a sense of history, we can see what happened as the church gained power and success and great wealth. As Martin Luther would charge in what became known as the Reformation, the church looked more like the church of Caesar than the church of Jesus Christ. When survival becomes more important than the question of what is surviving, then somehow the way of Jesus Christ gets lost. It can happen with churches and with people.
Many decades ago, while working as a chaplain, I met this man, who had been a Roman Catholic priest during World War ll. He was French, lived in Paris, where he worked for the French Resistance. “I would do nothing directly violent,” he said, “but I got information, which helped the Resistance do violent things. My conscience was not clear, but I lived in a time when I could not afford the luxury of a clear conscience. God will judge; I don’t have the wisdom to do so,” he insisted.
He told me how he was finally arrested along with two other priests. “One I knew was as guilty as I,” he said, “but the third, it was all a mistake. He was not a bad man, just a very timid one. He had no sympathies for the Nazis; he simply went about his priestly work, and tried to ignore politics. Why he was arrested, I don’t know, but mistakes were made. There we were, all packed together in this truck, tied together like a bunch of cattle. No one was guarding us; there was only the driver and a guy sitting next to him with his rifle poised. We were told that if any of us escaped, we all would be shot on the spot. No inquiry, no trial, no nothing, just a bullet. Well, most of us thought we would be shot anyway, so what did an escape matter? After about 20 minutes, this one young kid, maybe neither 16 nor 17 got free and jumped off the truck. We were glad for him, but do you know what that timid priest did, he shouted to the driver. In less than five minutes, the kid was captured and shot. Right there in front of us, shot dead.
I remember two things,” he continued his story---“the look of sheer defiance on that kid’s face as he met death and the look of utter shame and desolation on the priest’s face. He knew what he had done not only to that boy but also to Christ. I just looked at him without saying a word, but the other priest went up to him and said, “Get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to God.”
The only thing that cowardly man could do was hang his head while tears rolled down his cheeks. As you see, I survived, but at the war’s end, I left the priesthood as well as the church. I saw that the most important mark of the church came to be its survival, and I just could not buy that. That’s why Pope Pius XII did not speak out against Hitler; that’s why the state Lutheran church told its clergy to take a loyalty oath to the Fuhrer, and this was why the priest shouted the alarm at an escape. It was all about survival. I understand survival, he said. I was lucky enough to survive. But you always have to ask, what we are trying to survive for. What is it that we are trying to do and to be?
A pretty important question, isn’t it? Peter could not imagine that anything was more important than Jesus’ survival. How else could Jesus bring in God’s kingdom unless he survived? Start with survival, we tell ourselves, because everything flows from that. Or does it? Is the survival question really the most important one to ask, not only as individuals, but also as a church? As the priest said, “You always need to ask yourself, “What are you trying to survive for? What is that you are trying to do and to be?”
Matthew 16: 21-28
When I was growing up, my father used to say about Jesus, “You have to wonder about a guy who picked such losers for followers. Why didn’t he choose a brighter bunch?” The Gospels writers might have wondered the same thing, because there is no doubt about it, the disciples are not portrayed in a very positive light. They are forever misunderstanding Jesus. I have to confess, Peter was never my favorite, too impulsive, all heart with very little head. Yet Peter is the disciple who rightly confesses Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, son of the Living God. All three synoptic gospels give Peter that role, though Matthew’s Gospel is the only one who puts him as the head of the church. And now in this week’s lesson, right after being praised by Jesus for recognizing the truth, Peter gets kicked in the stomach when Jesus calls him Satan. “Get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to me.” But in all honesty, who can blame Peter? We can all imagine what it feels like to be told something that feels so wrong, so out of syn with reality as we know it, that we too protest. “God forbid. This must never happen.”
A couple gallantly struggles to keep their marriage together for a number of years. They try couple’s therapy, marriage encounter; they patiently wait and hope to see if things improve, but after years of working and hoping, they are exhausted from the effort. And now the time comes when the couple must tell their three children, who are 9, 12 and 16 that their hearts are about to break apart, because the parents just can’t make a go of it. And the children have no idea what is coming: “God forbid. This must never happen!”
And what about the 30 year old who sits across from a doctor, telling her that the sore on her eyelid is inoperable cancer, and she has less than a year to live. God forbid! This must never happen.
We know, don’t we, what it is like to hear something that kicks us right smack in the stomach and wrings the heart dry. It feels so completely wrong, and yet here this other person is telling us, “This is the way it is, the way it must be.” “God forbid,” we protest. “This must not happen.”
Well, this is exactly what it must have been like for Peter. He heard something from the lips of Jesus that was crazy, so outside the orbit in which he had lived that there was no way he could accept it. And the irony for him is that this came right after he had just received praise from Jesus for having correctly identified Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. Last week we heard Jesus tell Peter that he will be the rock upon which Jesus will build the church. And now this rock is pulverized, when Jesus says, “Get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to me, for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” What an incredible put down! Peter goes from rock to stumbling block in just a few short sentences. Who wouldn’t be confused?
Now it is always important to remember when we try to understand the bible that the writer always has an agenda, a particular way of seeing and interpreting. And remember that the story is told from the perspective of looking back. And as we all know, when we look back at something, oh, the view looks quite different. We see things we did not notice before, and then there are things we saw before that drop out of the picture. They no longer seem important. Now Matthew’s Gospel was written sometime around the year 85, well after the earthly life of Jesus and after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in the year 70. With the destruction of the Temple, Judaism radically changed, from a Temple centered religion with all its ritual laws and rules of sacrifice, to a synagogue centered religion, where people met not to make sacrifice but to read, pray and ponder the meaning of the law in the new world they found themselves in. So, Judaism and Christianity were essentially siblings, growing up along side one another, each, however, with different notions of what a Messiah looked like.
The trouble with Jesus was that to the Jews he did not look like any kind of messiah they would recognize. The last thing a messiah was supposed to do was end up on a cross. A messiah was supposed to usher in a new age of peace and prosperity. A messiah was supposed to return Israel to the grandeur of its past, like the time King David ruled a United Kingdom and Solomon dispensed wisdom from the grandeur of the Temple he had built. A messiah implied power, political power as well as religious power, but here the Jews were in the year 85 with their temple destroyed and their identity humiliated by Rome. Of course, they could recognize Jesus as a wise and good teacher, a miracle worker and a healer, but messiah---not on your life!
A Messiah is supposed to sit on a throne not hang on a cross. And in Jesus’ day the cross meant something very specific. It meant you were an enemy of Rome, and Rome crucified its enemies---at least enemies, who were not Roman citizens. So, there is no denying that in Matthew’s particular context loyalty to Jesus Christ meant resistance to Rome. But the big question was: how does one resist?
It is amazing that a movement could be successfully built on the command to take up your cross and follow. Yet it worked. People flocked to Christianity, beginning at first with the poor and the dis-empowered and then the educated classes began to follow. Now because we do have a sense of history, we can see what happened as the church gained power and success and great wealth. As Martin Luther would charge in what became known as the Reformation, the church looked more like the church of Caesar than the church of Jesus Christ. When survival becomes more important than the question of what is surviving, then somehow the way of Jesus Christ gets lost. It can happen with churches and with people.
Many decades ago, while working as a chaplain, I met this man, who had been a Roman Catholic priest during World War ll. He was French, lived in Paris, where he worked for the French Resistance. “I would do nothing directly violent,” he said, “but I got information, which helped the Resistance do violent things. My conscience was not clear, but I lived in a time when I could not afford the luxury of a clear conscience. God will judge; I don’t have the wisdom to do so,” he insisted.
He told me how he was finally arrested along with two other priests. “One I knew was as guilty as I,” he said, “but the third, it was all a mistake. He was not a bad man, just a very timid one. He had no sympathies for the Nazis; he simply went about his priestly work, and tried to ignore politics. Why he was arrested, I don’t know, but mistakes were made. There we were, all packed together in this truck, tied together like a bunch of cattle. No one was guarding us; there was only the driver and a guy sitting next to him with his rifle poised. We were told that if any of us escaped, we all would be shot on the spot. No inquiry, no trial, no nothing, just a bullet. Well, most of us thought we would be shot anyway, so what did an escape matter? After about 20 minutes, this one young kid, maybe neither 16 nor 17 got free and jumped off the truck. We were glad for him, but do you know what that timid priest did, he shouted to the driver. In less than five minutes, the kid was captured and shot. Right there in front of us, shot dead.
I remember two things,” he continued his story---“the look of sheer defiance on that kid’s face as he met death and the look of utter shame and desolation on the priest’s face. He knew what he had done not only to that boy but also to Christ. I just looked at him without saying a word, but the other priest went up to him and said, “Get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to God.”
The only thing that cowardly man could do was hang his head while tears rolled down his cheeks. As you see, I survived, but at the war’s end, I left the priesthood as well as the church. I saw that the most important mark of the church came to be its survival, and I just could not buy that. That’s why Pope Pius XII did not speak out against Hitler; that’s why the state Lutheran church told its clergy to take a loyalty oath to the Fuhrer, and this was why the priest shouted the alarm at an escape. It was all about survival. I understand survival, he said. I was lucky enough to survive. But you always have to ask, what we are trying to survive for. What is it that we are trying to do and to be?
A pretty important question, isn’t it? Peter could not imagine that anything was more important than Jesus’ survival. How else could Jesus bring in God’s kingdom unless he survived? Start with survival, we tell ourselves, because everything flows from that. Or does it? Is the survival question really the most important one to ask, not only as individuals, but also as a church? As the priest said, “You always need to ask yourself, “What are you trying to survive for? What is that you are trying to do and to be?”
August 20, 2020
How can anyone who is able to use reason, and who believes in dealing out justice to all God’s creature, think it is right to withhold from one half the human race rights and privileges freely accord to the other half which is neither or deserving nor more capable of exercising them? Mary Church Terrell, prominent Black leader of the women’s suffrage movement, also a daughter of slaves. She pushed White suffragists to include Black women in the battle for suffrage.
Dear Friends,
Tuesday, August 18, 2020 was the 100 year anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, when women finally won the right to vote. They were not given the right; they won it, working for nearly one hundred years for a victory that was never promised or assured. It was a hard fought and ugly battle, pitched not only against elite, politically powerful men, but also against women, who assiduously worked against female suffrage. (Note: Not all women were included in in the 19th Amendment. Chinese women, even if born in this country, were not recognized as citizens and Native American women were also denied suffrage. Also Black women were often prevented from voting until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.)
In recognition of this important milestone, President Trump decided to sign a pardon for Susan B. Anthony, who had been one of the nation’s leading feminists and advocates for women’s suffrage. On election day, 1872 In the city of Rochester, where she lived, Susan B. Anthony showed up at a polling place to cast her ballot. Later that day a federal marshal arrived at her home and arrested her for illegally voting. She was tried, found guilty and fined $100. She had no intention of paying the fine and wanted to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court, but a well wisher, paid the fine, thus ending her legal battle. Anthony was furious, because she believed the fight should continue. Historians, who have studied Anthony, claim she would be displeased with the pardon. Her arrest and conviction were points of pride with her, and to be pardoned, the historians claim, is an admission of guilt. While it is true, she voted illegally, Anthony would say that the country had no right to deny women their suffrage, and so it is the nation that needs pardoning, not she! One female historian, Amy Gordon, editor of Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, agreed that Anthony would certainly have turned down the pardon, because the President’s pardon gives validity to her trial.
Whatever we think about the pardon, Tuesday was a momentous day. It came during the week when a woman of color was nominated for Vice President of the United States. It came as The Me Too Movement continues to raise the specter of sexual assault against women. And it came three months before a Presidential election, in which women’s votes will be key in determining the winner. Women’s suffrage is part of a longer story which embraces voting rights, citizenship rights and women’s rights---all issues the country is still grappling with today.
While there are many fascinating aspects to the story of female suffrage, some of the most interesting concern the people, including the women, who opposed it. As church people, we might be interested to know that some of the strong opposition actually came from the church with clergy pointing out that scripture puts women in a subordinate position. The story of Adam and Eve from Genesis 2 was a favorite way to argue for subordination, since Eve is made from Adam’s rib. But this completely ignores Genesis 1, where man and woman are made at the same time. It is also true that many mainline Protestant churches heartily supported female suffrage, perhaps as much as half. After all, many churches had been heavily involved in reform movements, including anti-slavery work, so women’s suffrage was part of that reform agenda.
We all know about the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, but how many of us realize that the disaster was used as an argument against the extension of voting rights to women? Soon after the sinking, an article appeared in The Woman’s Protest, a journal dedicated to opposing suffrage for women. Called “A Lesson that Came from the Sea,” by a leading anti-suffragist, Josephine Jewell Dodge, the article argued that as the ship began to sink, the cry that went up was not, “Voters first!” but “Women first!” And Dodge claimed that the women did not think of arguing for equality in that particular situation. (I would point out, however, that there were plenty of women who refused to leave their husbands behind on the ship, and that many of the women who climbed aboard the lifeboats were holding babies and young children in their arms.) Dodge went on to argue that the ghastly disaster “pointed out the everlasting difference of the sexes.” It is fascinating that she was the daughter of an outspoken suffragist, and though she opposed female suffrage, Dodge was also a reformer, working to secure education for the poor. In fact, many of the women anti-suffragists were reformers, working on behalf of child welfare, education and prison reform.
As the suffrage movement gained strength toward the end of the 19th century, many women raised their opposing voices. The default position of practically everyone was that politics and government were concerns that belonged solely to men and that when men voted, they were voting for their wives and families as well as themselves. So why would women need to vote, since their concerns were already taken care of. When women met at Seneca Falls, New York in 1848 to draft their statement calling for equality, Lucretia Mott, a Quaker feminist, warned against including any statement about female suffrage, lest it “make us look ridiculous.” In 1871 a 16th Amendment to the Constitution was proposed for women suffrage---after the 15th, which granted Black men the right to vote. But immediately 19 wives of Republican senators, Civil War generals and cabinet members published a petition against it. In fact, female opposition tended to come from elite, wealthy, White women, married to prominent White men. One female historian claimed she could find not one example of a Black woman opposing female suffrage.
So why the opposition? What was the fear? One prominent woman, a trained artist and founder of The Art Students League of New York, Helena de Kay Gilder, believed that the burden of the ballot “would corrupt women and even unsex them!’ Then there was Annie Nathan Meyer, a founder of Barnard College in New York. While she strongly believed women should be educated, she did not believe they should vote, and her debates with her suffragist sister, Maud, gained much press attention.
The female opposition did not say that women should remain at home. In fact, the most prominent among them believed strongly in women’s public role, fighting for the common good for all people. But, they said, a concern with politics and voting would only prove corrosive to women’s ability to be non-partisan and support those causes, which needed no political party to gain ascendancy.
Much has changed over the past 100 years, and the role of women is certainly part of that change. We can also ask and wonder what God has been up to in all this change. As I mentioned earlier churches and their clergy played a prominent role in both support of and opposition to women’s suffrage. And those Christians who supported the cause firmly believed that just as God’s liberating Spirit had moved to bring freedom and liberty to the slaves, so too was God’s Spirit moving to bring the vote to women. God’s Spirit is still moving, and just as people had different interpretations of that movement one hundred years ago, so people have different interpretations today. The question is not whether God is involved in politics, because the Bible is filled with God’s activity in politics. God acts on the side of justice, and justice involves politics. The question then as now is HOW is God involved and what can we learn from God’s involvement? These are questions worth asking and pondering.
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
How can anyone who is able to use reason, and who believes in dealing out justice to all God’s creature, think it is right to withhold from one half the human race rights and privileges freely accord to the other half which is neither or deserving nor more capable of exercising them? Mary Church Terrell, prominent Black leader of the women’s suffrage movement, also a daughter of slaves. She pushed White suffragists to include Black women in the battle for suffrage.
Dear Friends,
Tuesday, August 18, 2020 was the 100 year anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, when women finally won the right to vote. They were not given the right; they won it, working for nearly one hundred years for a victory that was never promised or assured. It was a hard fought and ugly battle, pitched not only against elite, politically powerful men, but also against women, who assiduously worked against female suffrage. (Note: Not all women were included in in the 19th Amendment. Chinese women, even if born in this country, were not recognized as citizens and Native American women were also denied suffrage. Also Black women were often prevented from voting until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.)
In recognition of this important milestone, President Trump decided to sign a pardon for Susan B. Anthony, who had been one of the nation’s leading feminists and advocates for women’s suffrage. On election day, 1872 In the city of Rochester, where she lived, Susan B. Anthony showed up at a polling place to cast her ballot. Later that day a federal marshal arrived at her home and arrested her for illegally voting. She was tried, found guilty and fined $100. She had no intention of paying the fine and wanted to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court, but a well wisher, paid the fine, thus ending her legal battle. Anthony was furious, because she believed the fight should continue. Historians, who have studied Anthony, claim she would be displeased with the pardon. Her arrest and conviction were points of pride with her, and to be pardoned, the historians claim, is an admission of guilt. While it is true, she voted illegally, Anthony would say that the country had no right to deny women their suffrage, and so it is the nation that needs pardoning, not she! One female historian, Amy Gordon, editor of Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, agreed that Anthony would certainly have turned down the pardon, because the President’s pardon gives validity to her trial.
Whatever we think about the pardon, Tuesday was a momentous day. It came during the week when a woman of color was nominated for Vice President of the United States. It came as The Me Too Movement continues to raise the specter of sexual assault against women. And it came three months before a Presidential election, in which women’s votes will be key in determining the winner. Women’s suffrage is part of a longer story which embraces voting rights, citizenship rights and women’s rights---all issues the country is still grappling with today.
While there are many fascinating aspects to the story of female suffrage, some of the most interesting concern the people, including the women, who opposed it. As church people, we might be interested to know that some of the strong opposition actually came from the church with clergy pointing out that scripture puts women in a subordinate position. The story of Adam and Eve from Genesis 2 was a favorite way to argue for subordination, since Eve is made from Adam’s rib. But this completely ignores Genesis 1, where man and woman are made at the same time. It is also true that many mainline Protestant churches heartily supported female suffrage, perhaps as much as half. After all, many churches had been heavily involved in reform movements, including anti-slavery work, so women’s suffrage was part of that reform agenda.
We all know about the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, but how many of us realize that the disaster was used as an argument against the extension of voting rights to women? Soon after the sinking, an article appeared in The Woman’s Protest, a journal dedicated to opposing suffrage for women. Called “A Lesson that Came from the Sea,” by a leading anti-suffragist, Josephine Jewell Dodge, the article argued that as the ship began to sink, the cry that went up was not, “Voters first!” but “Women first!” And Dodge claimed that the women did not think of arguing for equality in that particular situation. (I would point out, however, that there were plenty of women who refused to leave their husbands behind on the ship, and that many of the women who climbed aboard the lifeboats were holding babies and young children in their arms.) Dodge went on to argue that the ghastly disaster “pointed out the everlasting difference of the sexes.” It is fascinating that she was the daughter of an outspoken suffragist, and though she opposed female suffrage, Dodge was also a reformer, working to secure education for the poor. In fact, many of the women anti-suffragists were reformers, working on behalf of child welfare, education and prison reform.
As the suffrage movement gained strength toward the end of the 19th century, many women raised their opposing voices. The default position of practically everyone was that politics and government were concerns that belonged solely to men and that when men voted, they were voting for their wives and families as well as themselves. So why would women need to vote, since their concerns were already taken care of. When women met at Seneca Falls, New York in 1848 to draft their statement calling for equality, Lucretia Mott, a Quaker feminist, warned against including any statement about female suffrage, lest it “make us look ridiculous.” In 1871 a 16th Amendment to the Constitution was proposed for women suffrage---after the 15th, which granted Black men the right to vote. But immediately 19 wives of Republican senators, Civil War generals and cabinet members published a petition against it. In fact, female opposition tended to come from elite, wealthy, White women, married to prominent White men. One female historian claimed she could find not one example of a Black woman opposing female suffrage.
So why the opposition? What was the fear? One prominent woman, a trained artist and founder of The Art Students League of New York, Helena de Kay Gilder, believed that the burden of the ballot “would corrupt women and even unsex them!’ Then there was Annie Nathan Meyer, a founder of Barnard College in New York. While she strongly believed women should be educated, she did not believe they should vote, and her debates with her suffragist sister, Maud, gained much press attention.
The female opposition did not say that women should remain at home. In fact, the most prominent among them believed strongly in women’s public role, fighting for the common good for all people. But, they said, a concern with politics and voting would only prove corrosive to women’s ability to be non-partisan and support those causes, which needed no political party to gain ascendancy.
Much has changed over the past 100 years, and the role of women is certainly part of that change. We can also ask and wonder what God has been up to in all this change. As I mentioned earlier churches and their clergy played a prominent role in both support of and opposition to women’s suffrage. And those Christians who supported the cause firmly believed that just as God’s liberating Spirit had moved to bring freedom and liberty to the slaves, so too was God’s Spirit moving to bring the vote to women. God’s Spirit is still moving, and just as people had different interpretations of that movement one hundred years ago, so people have different interpretations today. The question is not whether God is involved in politics, because the Bible is filled with God’s activity in politics. God acts on the side of justice, and justice involves politics. The question then as now is HOW is God involved and what can we learn from God’s involvement? These are questions worth asking and pondering.
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
WHO DO YOU SAY I AM? by: Rev. Dr. Sandra L. Olsen 8/23/2020
Romans 12: 1-8
Matthew 16: 13-20
As a child I was an avid fan of the television show, The Lone Ranger. I was particularly impressed by the drama of the show’s ending, when the person, who had been helped by the Lone Ranger, would always ask the same question, “Who is that masked man?” And the answer too was always the same: “Why don’t you know, that’s the Lone Ranger! Hi Ho, Silver, away! ”And then William Tell’s Overture would play as the Lone Ranger rode off into the future. When I was very young, four and five, I especially took great delight in shouting out the answer, because well, at age four, there were so many questions I could not answer, and so it was sheer joy to shout out the one I did know.
Who is that man? This is the question put to us by our text today from Matthew. In some ways Jesus did and still does appear as the masked man, someone whose identity is not necessarily obvious to all, someone doing good for others without expecting to be rewarded. Since Jesus is such a central part of our western culture, the question of his identity comes up time and time again, even for those who are not Christian. People are always trying to figure out exactly who he is.
I grew up in the church, faithfully attending Presbyterian Sunday school from the age of 2 to about 14, and throughout most of those years, I accepted what I had been taught about Jesus. He was the Messiah, God’s Son. But adolescence brings a whole new set of questions, and so by the time I left for college, I was not so sure who Jesus was. What did it mean, for example, to say that someone was God’s Son? I did not believe this was a question of biology---as if Jesus literally received 23 chromosomes from his father God. But still, I recognized there was something decisive and authoritative about this man, though I could not put it into words. By the time I finished college, I was pretty much finished with the church, at least for a while, but I was not finished with Jesus. He still continued to interest and even haunts me. Who is this man? A great moral teacher and leader, founder of a new religion, Son of God?
People have been asking such questions for a very long time now, and we are particularly fortunate to live in an age that has at its disposal more knowledge about the first century than our ancestors in the faith ever had. We have an understanding of the some of the forces and influences that impacted Jesus and his time. If God is indeed a God of history, as both the Old and New Testaments affirm, we cannot afford to ignore history, for God makes god-self known there. And Jesus lived in history, in a particular time and place. Now historical knowledge is not the same thing as faith, but faith participates in knowledge and in history. Even the name Jesus Christ is an attempt to bring faith and history together. We often utter the name as if Jesus were the first name and Christ the last name, but Christ is a title, the Greek word for Messiah, so what we are saying in the name Jesus Christ is that the historical person of Jesus, the one who lived and died in Palestine in the first century, is the chosen one of God. He reveals to us what God is like and how God looks when God shows up in a human life.
We know that at the time of Jesus, Israel was an occupied nation under Roman rule.
What a calamity that was for the Jews, for how could they, the chosen people of God, be given over to the rule of pagans and idolaters? The Old Testament prophets like Jeremiah and Isaiah had an answer to that question: sin. Israel had a long history of suffering under occupations: Assyria, Babylonia and Persia, and the prophets had declared that this was because Israel had failed to honor its covenant with God. The people had flagrantly disregarded the law, failing to show compassion for the poor and the outcast. Conquest, according to the prophetic understanding, was the punishment for sin, and so, once again Israel in the first century was a conquered nation, and therefore, according to the prophetic understanding, guilty of sin.
And this is why the historical Jesus spoke so much about the forgiveness of sins. He stood directly in the prophetic line, believing that the redemption of Israel meant that God forgives Israel its sin. Now it is important to understand that forgiveness for Jesus was not primarily about personal sin, like adultery, theft and murder, but it was much more about corporate sin, Israel’s failure to live as the people of God, which demanded justice for the poor and care for the widow and orphan. Western culture, since the Reformation, has an individualistic bias, and so we normally see sin as individual acts. Most Americans shy away from any talk of corporate sin, which is one reason it is so difficult in our nation to talk about racism and sexism and economic injustice ---all examples of corporate sin. People try to individualize the discussion by saying, “We were not the ones who kidnapped people in Africa and brought them here as slaves. We did not fight to keep slavery legal. We are not the ones who passed tax laws, concentrating 77.1% of the nation’s wealth in the top 10%, while the bottom 50% of Americans owns a mere 1% of the nation’s wealth. We are not the ones who stood with our knees on George Floyd’s neck----all true, but the prophets, including Jesus, would remind us how the system has been designed to benefit certain people at the expense of others. Guilt is assigned not directly but indirectly through association with particular groups, defined by race, gender, income, wealth and power. Whether or not you have directly caused the social sin, if you have benefited from male, white or wealth privilege, there is a sense in which you share guilt. Now you may not like this perspective, but it is the biblical view as put forth by the Old Testament prophets and shared by Jesus.
Jesus taught that God's forgiveness of Israel was the sign that the kingdom was breaking in, and that God was indeed acting in history to make all things (including Israel) new. As the new prophet and messiah, Jesus was specifically offering a new path for Israel to take. Israel would be the light of the world, a city on a hill, not because it would lord power over its enemies, but because it would love its enemies. Other groups at the time had different perspectives, like the Zealots, who were ready to use violence against Rome to achieve Israel's liberation. Then there were the followers of King Herod, including some members of the high priestly class, who were willing to compromise with Rome that some of Rome’s power might trickle down to them. And there were the purists, groups like the Essenes, who would remove themselves completely from society and try to live as a pure, separate community.
For Jesus none of these options was acceptable. They were not the way of God’s kingdom, he insisted. While Jesus did not believe that Israel could overthrow Rome, he did think that God could and would. Rome would be shown for what it was---a power hungry beast, whose crimes would be brought to full light, even as Israel's crimes would also come to light. Repent and believe was the heart of Jesus' message, a call to turn away from violence, exclusivity and compromise and embrace compassion and open table fellowship, where all would be welcome, as a sign of the radical welcoming that is God's kingdom.
We know that this welcoming of sinners and outcasts were deeply offensive to the Jewish religious leaders, not because they were all snobs and thought themselves too good to relate to such people. The real reason this open invitation, this radical graciousness to the least of these was so threatening to the leadership was because Jesus offered it himself on behalf of God, totally bypassing the Temple and its cult. From the Jewish perspective this was most certainly blasphemy! No wonder he had to die. And die he did; executed by the collusion between Roman and Jewish power. But his death did not finish the story, because new life came, and no matter how we interpret the resurrection, no one can deny that its aftermath led to the birth of the church. And against all odds, including persecution, the church grew and flourished.
Now admittedly in the western world, at least, the church these days is facing huge challenges. In our own country main line Protestant churches close every day, and so we might wonder why in such an atmosphere Christians should care about the historical Jesus. But the hard and simple truth is that whenever the church shows no concern for the historical Jesus, as it did in the early 20th century, when Albert Schweitzer published his book, The Quest for the Historical Jesus, shocking so many people that the church laid those questions to rest, then this gap of knowledge helped to lay the groundwork for a hateful ideology in Germany, which enslaved the state Lutheran church with images of Jesus that justified indifference and even hatred of the Jews. In our own country images of Jesus as the supreme white man were used to justify slavery as well as the Jim Crow laws that followed the Civil War and still haunt our history today.
History does not reveal everything we might want to know about Jesus, and history does not create faith. But history does show us Jesus standing up to worldly and yes political power with the only force he had---the force of love and forgiveness. In the actual life Jesus lived, we Christians claim we can see God showing up, pushing back and beyond the boundaries people draw around themselves and their lives. And so, the question, which came to Peter so long ago, also comes to us: Who do you say I am? And, if we dare to answer, “You are the Christ, the chosen one of God,” we should answer not only with our hearts but also with our minds, recalling what the Apostle Paul so eloquently wrote long ago: Be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Romans 12: 1-8
Matthew 16: 13-20
As a child I was an avid fan of the television show, The Lone Ranger. I was particularly impressed by the drama of the show’s ending, when the person, who had been helped by the Lone Ranger, would always ask the same question, “Who is that masked man?” And the answer too was always the same: “Why don’t you know, that’s the Lone Ranger! Hi Ho, Silver, away! ”And then William Tell’s Overture would play as the Lone Ranger rode off into the future. When I was very young, four and five, I especially took great delight in shouting out the answer, because well, at age four, there were so many questions I could not answer, and so it was sheer joy to shout out the one I did know.
Who is that man? This is the question put to us by our text today from Matthew. In some ways Jesus did and still does appear as the masked man, someone whose identity is not necessarily obvious to all, someone doing good for others without expecting to be rewarded. Since Jesus is such a central part of our western culture, the question of his identity comes up time and time again, even for those who are not Christian. People are always trying to figure out exactly who he is.
I grew up in the church, faithfully attending Presbyterian Sunday school from the age of 2 to about 14, and throughout most of those years, I accepted what I had been taught about Jesus. He was the Messiah, God’s Son. But adolescence brings a whole new set of questions, and so by the time I left for college, I was not so sure who Jesus was. What did it mean, for example, to say that someone was God’s Son? I did not believe this was a question of biology---as if Jesus literally received 23 chromosomes from his father God. But still, I recognized there was something decisive and authoritative about this man, though I could not put it into words. By the time I finished college, I was pretty much finished with the church, at least for a while, but I was not finished with Jesus. He still continued to interest and even haunts me. Who is this man? A great moral teacher and leader, founder of a new religion, Son of God?
People have been asking such questions for a very long time now, and we are particularly fortunate to live in an age that has at its disposal more knowledge about the first century than our ancestors in the faith ever had. We have an understanding of the some of the forces and influences that impacted Jesus and his time. If God is indeed a God of history, as both the Old and New Testaments affirm, we cannot afford to ignore history, for God makes god-self known there. And Jesus lived in history, in a particular time and place. Now historical knowledge is not the same thing as faith, but faith participates in knowledge and in history. Even the name Jesus Christ is an attempt to bring faith and history together. We often utter the name as if Jesus were the first name and Christ the last name, but Christ is a title, the Greek word for Messiah, so what we are saying in the name Jesus Christ is that the historical person of Jesus, the one who lived and died in Palestine in the first century, is the chosen one of God. He reveals to us what God is like and how God looks when God shows up in a human life.
We know that at the time of Jesus, Israel was an occupied nation under Roman rule.
What a calamity that was for the Jews, for how could they, the chosen people of God, be given over to the rule of pagans and idolaters? The Old Testament prophets like Jeremiah and Isaiah had an answer to that question: sin. Israel had a long history of suffering under occupations: Assyria, Babylonia and Persia, and the prophets had declared that this was because Israel had failed to honor its covenant with God. The people had flagrantly disregarded the law, failing to show compassion for the poor and the outcast. Conquest, according to the prophetic understanding, was the punishment for sin, and so, once again Israel in the first century was a conquered nation, and therefore, according to the prophetic understanding, guilty of sin.
And this is why the historical Jesus spoke so much about the forgiveness of sins. He stood directly in the prophetic line, believing that the redemption of Israel meant that God forgives Israel its sin. Now it is important to understand that forgiveness for Jesus was not primarily about personal sin, like adultery, theft and murder, but it was much more about corporate sin, Israel’s failure to live as the people of God, which demanded justice for the poor and care for the widow and orphan. Western culture, since the Reformation, has an individualistic bias, and so we normally see sin as individual acts. Most Americans shy away from any talk of corporate sin, which is one reason it is so difficult in our nation to talk about racism and sexism and economic injustice ---all examples of corporate sin. People try to individualize the discussion by saying, “We were not the ones who kidnapped people in Africa and brought them here as slaves. We did not fight to keep slavery legal. We are not the ones who passed tax laws, concentrating 77.1% of the nation’s wealth in the top 10%, while the bottom 50% of Americans owns a mere 1% of the nation’s wealth. We are not the ones who stood with our knees on George Floyd’s neck----all true, but the prophets, including Jesus, would remind us how the system has been designed to benefit certain people at the expense of others. Guilt is assigned not directly but indirectly through association with particular groups, defined by race, gender, income, wealth and power. Whether or not you have directly caused the social sin, if you have benefited from male, white or wealth privilege, there is a sense in which you share guilt. Now you may not like this perspective, but it is the biblical view as put forth by the Old Testament prophets and shared by Jesus.
Jesus taught that God's forgiveness of Israel was the sign that the kingdom was breaking in, and that God was indeed acting in history to make all things (including Israel) new. As the new prophet and messiah, Jesus was specifically offering a new path for Israel to take. Israel would be the light of the world, a city on a hill, not because it would lord power over its enemies, but because it would love its enemies. Other groups at the time had different perspectives, like the Zealots, who were ready to use violence against Rome to achieve Israel's liberation. Then there were the followers of King Herod, including some members of the high priestly class, who were willing to compromise with Rome that some of Rome’s power might trickle down to them. And there were the purists, groups like the Essenes, who would remove themselves completely from society and try to live as a pure, separate community.
For Jesus none of these options was acceptable. They were not the way of God’s kingdom, he insisted. While Jesus did not believe that Israel could overthrow Rome, he did think that God could and would. Rome would be shown for what it was---a power hungry beast, whose crimes would be brought to full light, even as Israel's crimes would also come to light. Repent and believe was the heart of Jesus' message, a call to turn away from violence, exclusivity and compromise and embrace compassion and open table fellowship, where all would be welcome, as a sign of the radical welcoming that is God's kingdom.
We know that this welcoming of sinners and outcasts were deeply offensive to the Jewish religious leaders, not because they were all snobs and thought themselves too good to relate to such people. The real reason this open invitation, this radical graciousness to the least of these was so threatening to the leadership was because Jesus offered it himself on behalf of God, totally bypassing the Temple and its cult. From the Jewish perspective this was most certainly blasphemy! No wonder he had to die. And die he did; executed by the collusion between Roman and Jewish power. But his death did not finish the story, because new life came, and no matter how we interpret the resurrection, no one can deny that its aftermath led to the birth of the church. And against all odds, including persecution, the church grew and flourished.
Now admittedly in the western world, at least, the church these days is facing huge challenges. In our own country main line Protestant churches close every day, and so we might wonder why in such an atmosphere Christians should care about the historical Jesus. But the hard and simple truth is that whenever the church shows no concern for the historical Jesus, as it did in the early 20th century, when Albert Schweitzer published his book, The Quest for the Historical Jesus, shocking so many people that the church laid those questions to rest, then this gap of knowledge helped to lay the groundwork for a hateful ideology in Germany, which enslaved the state Lutheran church with images of Jesus that justified indifference and even hatred of the Jews. In our own country images of Jesus as the supreme white man were used to justify slavery as well as the Jim Crow laws that followed the Civil War and still haunt our history today.
History does not reveal everything we might want to know about Jesus, and history does not create faith. But history does show us Jesus standing up to worldly and yes political power with the only force he had---the force of love and forgiveness. In the actual life Jesus lived, we Christians claim we can see God showing up, pushing back and beyond the boundaries people draw around themselves and their lives. And so, the question, which came to Peter so long ago, also comes to us: Who do you say I am? And, if we dare to answer, “You are the Christ, the chosen one of God,” we should answer not only with our hearts but also with our minds, recalling what the Apostle Paul so eloquently wrote long ago: Be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.
The Outsider by: Rev. Dr. Sandra L. Olsen 8/16/2020
Matthew 15: 10-28
Let’s face it: outsiders often unnerve people. There seems to be something in our genetic makeup that encourages or at least allows us to form in-groups and designate others as out-groups. Perhaps in our long genetic past, when survival was such a challenge, because of food scarcity and the threat posed by animals as well as marauding strangers, it made sense to form in-groups as a means of protection. And we human beings are not the only ones who do this. Chimpanzees, who share 99% of our DNA, do the same thing. It certainly is not one of our most endearing traits, because history attests that war and genocide have resulted from such designations. And yet, despite the fear and suspicion that the outsider can present, there is also no denying that sometimes the outsider brings exactly what is needed. And this is precisely what we have in the story of the unnamed Canaanite woman.
In so many ways she really was the ultimate outsider. First of all, she was a woman, and women counted for less than men. They were not allowed to study Torah, Jewish Law, and they could not testify in court, even if they were an eyewitness to a crime, because their word meant nothing. And this woman was a Canaanite, whom the Jews considered to be idolaters, meaning that they worshiped other gods, often gods of nature---god of the wind, the sea, the storm, the harvest. We know almost nothing about her. She is nameless, but that is often how it is in biblical stories. Except for the disciples and some other characters like Jesus’ parents, then Mary, Martha and Lazarus, the tax collector, Zacchaeus, most people are described by their condition, a blind, mute or deaf man, a person, possessed by a demon, a Samaritan, a father with two sons. They all are nameless.
What we do know about this woman is that she was a mother whose daughter was described as demon possessed. We are not really sure what that means. It could be a form of mental illness or perhaps epilepsy or something else that made her behavior seem strange. And if you were described as demon possessed, you can bet that meant trouble not only for you but also for your whole family. Chronic illness is a grinding experience not only for the person so afflicted, but also for the family. And sometimes then as now such illness can lead to abandonment. People sometimes leave, because they say they just can’t take it anymore. I saw a number of such cases when I worked in hospitals as a chaplain. But, whether this woman had a husband or not, it is clear that she as mother is the dominant actor. She is the one, actively seeking healing for her daughter.
Now up to this point in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus has been dealing with some pretty harsh critics. He had crossed the Sea of Galilee and landed on the west shore, where he was accosted by the Pharisees and scribes, who condemned him for what they saw as his ritual impurity. He did not follow all the kosher laws, and he did not demand that his disciples strictly adhere to the rules of ritual hand washing. This does not mean that Jesus was going out of his way to flaunt his disregard for such rules, because sometimes he did abide by them, but they were never uppermost in his mind. Though he certainly understood that these rules helped to define the Jewish people, setting them apart from gentiles, he did not believe that they constituted the most important part of Jewish identity. As he said, “It was not what you put into your mouth that made you unclean, but what came out of it---evil intentions and lies.” And after saying this, he left, moving into the gentile districts of Tyre and Sidon.
Now why did Jesus move into gentile territory? Jews normally did not go there unless they had business to conduct, but Jesus was not a merchant, so he would not have had a practical reason to be in gentile territory. But we are in Matthew’s gospel, and we know that in the mid 80’s, when this gospel was written, there was tremendous tension between Jewish Christians and gentile Christians, both very suspicious of the other. And yet here we have Jesus moving into gentile territory, where he changes his mind in response to a gentile woman.
She was certainly assertive, pushy some might say, but then she was a desperate mother, acting on behalf of her daughter. “Have mercy on me Lord, Son of David,” she pleaded. How many times she called out, we do not know, but she was annoying the disciples, who wanted Jesus to send her away, so finally he spoke, saying, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” That is apparently how he understood his mission, as a Jew to the Jews. She then knelt in a gesture of deep humility and again, asked for help, but all she got was a figurative kick in the gut. Jesus compared her to a dog. But this was no time for pride, because she knew it was all about her daughter, not about her. “Yes, Lord,” she said, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” And he answered, “Woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you wish.” And it was done; her daughter was healed.
Now some people might prefer to believe that Jesus was just testing her, but in this particular gospel, where there is so much tension between Jewish and Gentile Christians, it seems far more likely that the writer placed this story here to show that Jesus himself moved and changed and embraced a larger view, including the gentiles. And if Jesus could do it, his followers are called to do the same. If Jesus grew and changed, then so could they. And the one who brought about this change and growth was an outsider. And indeed, sometimes it is the outsider who brings in something that is missing.
A week and a half ago I conducted a memorial service for my friend, Judy. She and I were indeed friends, but I had been her minister in New Haven, and then I became her conservator. For the past two years she had been living in a nursing home in Marlborough, CT. Judy did not have an easy life. She had suffered abuse as a child and a teen, and mental illness was no stranger to her. A highly intelligent person, educated at one of the most intellectually elite schools in London and later at Quinnipiac University, she did become a nurse and worked with the mentally ill. Yet much of her adult life was lived as an outsider, the result of her own health and emotional challenges. And when you live on the margins like that, in and out of various living arrangements, when you die, there are rarely many people present at your service. Most of the people you knew and lived with don’t have cars and access to transportation. Her ex-husband was at the service, and two clergy, the Episcopal priest at the church in Waterbury, where she had been a member years before and where her service was held and I, who conducted most of the service.
As we exited the church and went into the beautiful courtyard, where her ashes were to be interred, a man suddenly joined us. “Excuse me,” he said, “but I was wondering if I could stand here with you while you bury the lady’s ashes. The secretary told me there weren’t many here, and I thought I would add myself to the group.” “Of course, Daniel,” the priest said. “You are welcome to join us.” And so, Daniel stayed. I learned later that Daniel did odd jobs around the church and lived in a small room nearby, and also suffered from mental illness. At the end of the burial service, he said to me, “You know Rev, when I die, I don’t expect there will be more than one or two people there, maybe just the priest. And so, I thought it mattered that I was here for this lady, Judy, because it mattered that she lived and that she died. Her life meant something, and though there were only four of us here, I think that the number four is important. It’s an even number, two plus two make four. That is better than the odd number 3. At least that is what I think.” “I think so too, Daniel,” I said. “Four rounds it all out. “I think Judy would be so pleased to have you here.”
Outsiders can and do make us nervous at times. We can think of outsiders as threats, as indeed, sometimes they are. Yet there are times when outsiders do for us and teach us what no one else can do---as the Canaanite woman did for Jesus and for the Jewish Christians in Matthew’s community and as Daniel did for the three of us who with him became four, rounding it all out, which I think in this case was pleasing not only to Judy but also to God.
Matthew 15: 10-28
Let’s face it: outsiders often unnerve people. There seems to be something in our genetic makeup that encourages or at least allows us to form in-groups and designate others as out-groups. Perhaps in our long genetic past, when survival was such a challenge, because of food scarcity and the threat posed by animals as well as marauding strangers, it made sense to form in-groups as a means of protection. And we human beings are not the only ones who do this. Chimpanzees, who share 99% of our DNA, do the same thing. It certainly is not one of our most endearing traits, because history attests that war and genocide have resulted from such designations. And yet, despite the fear and suspicion that the outsider can present, there is also no denying that sometimes the outsider brings exactly what is needed. And this is precisely what we have in the story of the unnamed Canaanite woman.
In so many ways she really was the ultimate outsider. First of all, she was a woman, and women counted for less than men. They were not allowed to study Torah, Jewish Law, and they could not testify in court, even if they were an eyewitness to a crime, because their word meant nothing. And this woman was a Canaanite, whom the Jews considered to be idolaters, meaning that they worshiped other gods, often gods of nature---god of the wind, the sea, the storm, the harvest. We know almost nothing about her. She is nameless, but that is often how it is in biblical stories. Except for the disciples and some other characters like Jesus’ parents, then Mary, Martha and Lazarus, the tax collector, Zacchaeus, most people are described by their condition, a blind, mute or deaf man, a person, possessed by a demon, a Samaritan, a father with two sons. They all are nameless.
What we do know about this woman is that she was a mother whose daughter was described as demon possessed. We are not really sure what that means. It could be a form of mental illness or perhaps epilepsy or something else that made her behavior seem strange. And if you were described as demon possessed, you can bet that meant trouble not only for you but also for your whole family. Chronic illness is a grinding experience not only for the person so afflicted, but also for the family. And sometimes then as now such illness can lead to abandonment. People sometimes leave, because they say they just can’t take it anymore. I saw a number of such cases when I worked in hospitals as a chaplain. But, whether this woman had a husband or not, it is clear that she as mother is the dominant actor. She is the one, actively seeking healing for her daughter.
Now up to this point in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus has been dealing with some pretty harsh critics. He had crossed the Sea of Galilee and landed on the west shore, where he was accosted by the Pharisees and scribes, who condemned him for what they saw as his ritual impurity. He did not follow all the kosher laws, and he did not demand that his disciples strictly adhere to the rules of ritual hand washing. This does not mean that Jesus was going out of his way to flaunt his disregard for such rules, because sometimes he did abide by them, but they were never uppermost in his mind. Though he certainly understood that these rules helped to define the Jewish people, setting them apart from gentiles, he did not believe that they constituted the most important part of Jewish identity. As he said, “It was not what you put into your mouth that made you unclean, but what came out of it---evil intentions and lies.” And after saying this, he left, moving into the gentile districts of Tyre and Sidon.
Now why did Jesus move into gentile territory? Jews normally did not go there unless they had business to conduct, but Jesus was not a merchant, so he would not have had a practical reason to be in gentile territory. But we are in Matthew’s gospel, and we know that in the mid 80’s, when this gospel was written, there was tremendous tension between Jewish Christians and gentile Christians, both very suspicious of the other. And yet here we have Jesus moving into gentile territory, where he changes his mind in response to a gentile woman.
She was certainly assertive, pushy some might say, but then she was a desperate mother, acting on behalf of her daughter. “Have mercy on me Lord, Son of David,” she pleaded. How many times she called out, we do not know, but she was annoying the disciples, who wanted Jesus to send her away, so finally he spoke, saying, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” That is apparently how he understood his mission, as a Jew to the Jews. She then knelt in a gesture of deep humility and again, asked for help, but all she got was a figurative kick in the gut. Jesus compared her to a dog. But this was no time for pride, because she knew it was all about her daughter, not about her. “Yes, Lord,” she said, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” And he answered, “Woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you wish.” And it was done; her daughter was healed.
Now some people might prefer to believe that Jesus was just testing her, but in this particular gospel, where there is so much tension between Jewish and Gentile Christians, it seems far more likely that the writer placed this story here to show that Jesus himself moved and changed and embraced a larger view, including the gentiles. And if Jesus could do it, his followers are called to do the same. If Jesus grew and changed, then so could they. And the one who brought about this change and growth was an outsider. And indeed, sometimes it is the outsider who brings in something that is missing.
A week and a half ago I conducted a memorial service for my friend, Judy. She and I were indeed friends, but I had been her minister in New Haven, and then I became her conservator. For the past two years she had been living in a nursing home in Marlborough, CT. Judy did not have an easy life. She had suffered abuse as a child and a teen, and mental illness was no stranger to her. A highly intelligent person, educated at one of the most intellectually elite schools in London and later at Quinnipiac University, she did become a nurse and worked with the mentally ill. Yet much of her adult life was lived as an outsider, the result of her own health and emotional challenges. And when you live on the margins like that, in and out of various living arrangements, when you die, there are rarely many people present at your service. Most of the people you knew and lived with don’t have cars and access to transportation. Her ex-husband was at the service, and two clergy, the Episcopal priest at the church in Waterbury, where she had been a member years before and where her service was held and I, who conducted most of the service.
As we exited the church and went into the beautiful courtyard, where her ashes were to be interred, a man suddenly joined us. “Excuse me,” he said, “but I was wondering if I could stand here with you while you bury the lady’s ashes. The secretary told me there weren’t many here, and I thought I would add myself to the group.” “Of course, Daniel,” the priest said. “You are welcome to join us.” And so, Daniel stayed. I learned later that Daniel did odd jobs around the church and lived in a small room nearby, and also suffered from mental illness. At the end of the burial service, he said to me, “You know Rev, when I die, I don’t expect there will be more than one or two people there, maybe just the priest. And so, I thought it mattered that I was here for this lady, Judy, because it mattered that she lived and that she died. Her life meant something, and though there were only four of us here, I think that the number four is important. It’s an even number, two plus two make four. That is better than the odd number 3. At least that is what I think.” “I think so too, Daniel,” I said. “Four rounds it all out. “I think Judy would be so pleased to have you here.”
Outsiders can and do make us nervous at times. We can think of outsiders as threats, as indeed, sometimes they are. Yet there are times when outsiders do for us and teach us what no one else can do---as the Canaanite woman did for Jesus and for the Jewish Christians in Matthew’s community and as Daniel did for the three of us who with him became four, rounding it all out, which I think in this case was pleasing not only to Judy but also to God.
August 12, 2020
Dear Friends,
Years ago, one of my parishioners, who suffered from periodic debilitating depression, made a startling discovery: “The dawn,” she proclaimed, is stunningly beautiful.” And believe it or not, that discovery helped to change her life. She explained to me that even in her younger years, when she did not struggle so much with depression, she was never, ever a morning person. “I would always go to bed quite late, 1:00 or 2:00 AM, but later, when depression became my enemy, I would stay up even later, finally going to bed around 4 or 4:30 AM. But there was this one summer morning in eastern Maine, when visiting family, who owned a cottage on the ocean, she happened to be up to witness the dawn, which in Maine comes early during the summer. “I could not believe how beautiful the scene was,” she said. “The sun rising over the water, the sky, painted in different hues of blue and violet and yellow. I simply stared, utterly transformed by the sight. I was accustomed to seeing the sky darken as evening shadows fell not only across the sky, but also across the landscape, but the rising of the sun---why that I had never seen! And it kind of gave me a new and different perspective. It was the birth of something new, something different, not the endings I was so accustomed to seeing in my depressed state.”
I had not thought of Patricia and her revelation until I happened to come across the August 12 edition of “The Christian Century,” which had invited people to write their reflections on the dawn. One man, Don Stevenson, wrote, ”Dawn is the holder of a very thin veil that separates darkness from light. It knows the reality of darkness even as it declares the presence of light. Dawn is that break into the day where the new begins, giving grace its definition.” Perhaps that sounds abstract---but the man was writing about his oldest daughter, named Dawn, who although filled with light, had her own demons to fight. She ended up homeless, dying from cancer in a shelter for medically compromised homeless people. For both father and daughter the dawn came during their last visit together, when she struggled out of her bed to play and sing, Amazing Grace on the keyboard she kept next to her bed. She had been lost, but now she did indeed feel found.
And then there is the reflection, written by a woman from Oakland, CA, Alicia Van Riggs. She was one of those people who commuted to work every day on a bicycle. Some years ago, on a very early summer morning, she found herself riding “under a lavender velvet sky.” That sky alone was breathtaking, but then she noticed above the western horizon a full golden moon. Getting off her bike, she stared at the scene, even a poet would have trouble describing, and then suddenly burst into tears. At first, she was not sure why she was crying. Sure, beauty does sometimes move us to tears, but that alone was not the reason. No, it was because she was alone with no one to share the experience. Beauty longs to be shared, she thought, and suddenly, there he was, out of the corner of her eye, she saw an older man, pushing a grocery cart filled with bottles and cans. He was about to pass her by, when he noticed her tear stained face. “Are you o.k.?” he wanted to know. “Yes,” she answered, it’s just that it is so beautiful,” and then pushing her eyes and chin toward the moon, he followed her movement. “Wow,” he said. “That IS beautiful!” Taking out a can of Mountain Dew, he popped it open, took a sip and then handed it to Alicia. “Want some?” he asked. “No thanks,” she replied. They both just stared at the dawn for a while before each of them went on his and her way.
Now, years later Alicia still recalls that dawn and that man. She still rides by that place, but the moon and the sky have never once repeated that act, and she has never seen that man again. She wishes she had taken a sip of that Mountain Dew, because, she now realizes he was offering her a kind of communion. Communion, after all, is about sharing and gratitude and the intimacy of God, which meets us not only in the church’s ritual of bread and wine, but also in other intimate places in our lives---often when we least expect it and are not looking for anything in particular. After all, this woman was simply riding her bicycle to work, and yet the moment became one of extraordinary grace.
I’m a morning person, and I have seen many dawns, but most of the time I am not so attentive to them---except when I am in Maine, in Bar Harbor. Then I pay attention, since I am rarely so busy there. Many people like to drive to the top of Cadillac Mountain to witness the sun’s rising, since it is the first place the sun hits land in the United States. I, however, prefer the walk down the road, leading to the water’s edge, which looks out far beyond, where distant mountains reach toward the sky, sometimes clear blue, at other times foggy gray. It’s quiet in the early morning, and even if I miss the rising of the sun, I still can feel the power of the dawn, which reminds me that with each new day a new beginning is promised.
Blessings on you,
Sandra
Dear Friends,
Years ago, one of my parishioners, who suffered from periodic debilitating depression, made a startling discovery: “The dawn,” she proclaimed, is stunningly beautiful.” And believe it or not, that discovery helped to change her life. She explained to me that even in her younger years, when she did not struggle so much with depression, she was never, ever a morning person. “I would always go to bed quite late, 1:00 or 2:00 AM, but later, when depression became my enemy, I would stay up even later, finally going to bed around 4 or 4:30 AM. But there was this one summer morning in eastern Maine, when visiting family, who owned a cottage on the ocean, she happened to be up to witness the dawn, which in Maine comes early during the summer. “I could not believe how beautiful the scene was,” she said. “The sun rising over the water, the sky, painted in different hues of blue and violet and yellow. I simply stared, utterly transformed by the sight. I was accustomed to seeing the sky darken as evening shadows fell not only across the sky, but also across the landscape, but the rising of the sun---why that I had never seen! And it kind of gave me a new and different perspective. It was the birth of something new, something different, not the endings I was so accustomed to seeing in my depressed state.”
I had not thought of Patricia and her revelation until I happened to come across the August 12 edition of “The Christian Century,” which had invited people to write their reflections on the dawn. One man, Don Stevenson, wrote, ”Dawn is the holder of a very thin veil that separates darkness from light. It knows the reality of darkness even as it declares the presence of light. Dawn is that break into the day where the new begins, giving grace its definition.” Perhaps that sounds abstract---but the man was writing about his oldest daughter, named Dawn, who although filled with light, had her own demons to fight. She ended up homeless, dying from cancer in a shelter for medically compromised homeless people. For both father and daughter the dawn came during their last visit together, when she struggled out of her bed to play and sing, Amazing Grace on the keyboard she kept next to her bed. She had been lost, but now she did indeed feel found.
And then there is the reflection, written by a woman from Oakland, CA, Alicia Van Riggs. She was one of those people who commuted to work every day on a bicycle. Some years ago, on a very early summer morning, she found herself riding “under a lavender velvet sky.” That sky alone was breathtaking, but then she noticed above the western horizon a full golden moon. Getting off her bike, she stared at the scene, even a poet would have trouble describing, and then suddenly burst into tears. At first, she was not sure why she was crying. Sure, beauty does sometimes move us to tears, but that alone was not the reason. No, it was because she was alone with no one to share the experience. Beauty longs to be shared, she thought, and suddenly, there he was, out of the corner of her eye, she saw an older man, pushing a grocery cart filled with bottles and cans. He was about to pass her by, when he noticed her tear stained face. “Are you o.k.?” he wanted to know. “Yes,” she answered, it’s just that it is so beautiful,” and then pushing her eyes and chin toward the moon, he followed her movement. “Wow,” he said. “That IS beautiful!” Taking out a can of Mountain Dew, he popped it open, took a sip and then handed it to Alicia. “Want some?” he asked. “No thanks,” she replied. They both just stared at the dawn for a while before each of them went on his and her way.
Now, years later Alicia still recalls that dawn and that man. She still rides by that place, but the moon and the sky have never once repeated that act, and she has never seen that man again. She wishes she had taken a sip of that Mountain Dew, because, she now realizes he was offering her a kind of communion. Communion, after all, is about sharing and gratitude and the intimacy of God, which meets us not only in the church’s ritual of bread and wine, but also in other intimate places in our lives---often when we least expect it and are not looking for anything in particular. After all, this woman was simply riding her bicycle to work, and yet the moment became one of extraordinary grace.
I’m a morning person, and I have seen many dawns, but most of the time I am not so attentive to them---except when I am in Maine, in Bar Harbor. Then I pay attention, since I am rarely so busy there. Many people like to drive to the top of Cadillac Mountain to witness the sun’s rising, since it is the first place the sun hits land in the United States. I, however, prefer the walk down the road, leading to the water’s edge, which looks out far beyond, where distant mountains reach toward the sky, sometimes clear blue, at other times foggy gray. It’s quiet in the early morning, and even if I miss the rising of the sun, I still can feel the power of the dawn, which reminds me that with each new day a new beginning is promised.
Blessings on you,
Sandra
August 9, 2020
Dear Friends,
I imagine not too many Americans pay much attention to what is going on in Saudi Arabia. Some women MIGHT recall that women finally were given the right to drive cars in 2016. And then, I am sure, all of us remember with horror the brutal murder of the Washington Post journalist, Jamil Khashoggi, by Saudis, likely approved, many believe, by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Then there are the numerous imprisonments of human rights activists, who are trying to move Saudi Arabia into a more progressive 21st century as well as Saudi support for the government in Yemen, where a civil war continues to rage. And yet, despite these negatives, something unexpected and exciting is happening in the area of the arts and music.
For many decades now the ultra-Orthodox religious clerics have been insisting that live music, theater, cinema and dance are all anti-Islamic. When they came to power in 1979, local extremists seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca and accused the House of Saud of catering to decadent western culture. The House of Saud, sensing that this was no passing fad, then took a swift turn to the right, and one of the first sacrifices was the arts. Suddenly the cinema, music and much of the visual arts were banned. Gender mixing was also forbidden. Musical instruments were banned, and if you were discovered to have one in your possession, it was smashed right before your eyes. Not only was the playing of instruments in groups banned, but also music lessons and keyboards were outlawed. And this was the way things were until 2019, when suddenly the Crown Prince began to consolidate his power, and then began to encourage the embracing of art, music and cinema. This is all part of his plan to transform the kingdom and its economy, which has been completely dependent upon oil for revenue. By diversifying the culture, the Crown Prince also hopes to diversify the economy and thus bring new life (and revenue) into the country. Within the past year such notables as Lionel Richie and Andrea Bocelli have been invited to perform in a glitzy hall in the midst of the Saudi desert. And, as Lionel Richie said, “Things here will never be the same again.”
It is hard to imagine Lionel Richie strolling up and down the stage in the middle of the Saudi desert, yelling at the top of his lungs, “I want some pandemonium.” At first all the robed men and women would do is gently sway back and forth. A few clapped to the beat, but it was all pretty tame. Finally, on the fourth song, one woman took the plunge. Running down the stairs, she moved herself right in front of the orchestra. Then another woman came, then another and another. Finally, a third of the audience was shouting, twisting, singing in unison, “She’s a brick house. She’s mighty-mighty.” It is certainly not what you would expect in conservative Saudi Arabia.
So, what is going on and why? Some cynically suggest that the Crown Prince is trying to deflect attention away from all his anti-democratic behaviors and policies. And that may indeed be the case. But it is hard to deny that once the arts are allowed expression, there are changes which cannot so easily be denied or controlled. After all, creativity and self-expression are usually the enemies of authoritarian regimes. We also believe that the arts are humanizing. I have never understood how the Nazis appeared to be such art lovers, while stealing from the great European art museums and collectors for their own private possession. Those in charge of concentration camps could weep at the beauty of a Bach cantata while murdering the prisoners in their charge. What did the beauty of art and music do for them? If beauty is indeed a pathway toward God, as the church has taught and supported, it is not a guaranteed path, as history attests. But we can always hope that the arts will prod people to grow and change toward compassion and kindness.
In 2017 The King Abdulaziz World Center for World Culture opened in eastern Saudi Arabia with a museum, cinema, theater and art gallery. Not only are works from local artists being sought, but also international artists are offered space to show their art. One such work, called “Sorry/I Forgive You” is by the Libyan Canadian artist Arwa Abouon. Notice that both a man and a woman are the forgiver as well as the forgiven. Other Saudi cities are hosting exhibitions of international artists, who are openly political, expressing opinions on social inequality, consumerism and injustice. From a western point of view, this is pretty tame, but not in a controlled society like Saudi Arabia.
One of the most important stated goals is to introduce music and the arts at an early age to encourage the creation of local Saudi art as well as creative and critical thinking. This is new for a society that has been completely comfortable with government jobs, whose income was guaranteed by oil. Saudis are now beginning to flock to live concerts, where they can hear musicians, who are self-taught, because there have been no music teachers and lessons. And they are discovering that music is a way of communicating and creating connections among people, who might not often speak to or interact with one another.
We do not know what the outcome of all this will be. It may be MORE than the House of Saud bargained for. In a society where houses are fenced in by concrete walls, to keep people separated from one another, the arts reach out and beyond, so new thoughts and ideas then have a chance to find their way in. And once ideas begin to freely flow, it is hard to stop them and even harder to control them. One man stood before a graffiti image of a 2015 work called, “Son of a Migrant From Syria,” featuring Steve Jobs carrying a sack over his left shoulder and an Apple II in his right hand. This was originally painted in the city of Calais in France, where there was a huge refugee camp. “So, what is this supposed to mean?” the man asked. A woman volunteer replied, “It’s about migrants,” she said. “Steve Jobs is of Syrian origin, and refugees and migrants can contribute and excel, just as Steve Jobs did.” “I did not realize,” he responded, “that art and graffiti could have a larger message.” And once that larger message is realized and embraced, life is never the same, whether in Saudi Arabia or our own nation.
Blessings,
Sandra
Dear Friends,
I imagine not too many Americans pay much attention to what is going on in Saudi Arabia. Some women MIGHT recall that women finally were given the right to drive cars in 2016. And then, I am sure, all of us remember with horror the brutal murder of the Washington Post journalist, Jamil Khashoggi, by Saudis, likely approved, many believe, by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Then there are the numerous imprisonments of human rights activists, who are trying to move Saudi Arabia into a more progressive 21st century as well as Saudi support for the government in Yemen, where a civil war continues to rage. And yet, despite these negatives, something unexpected and exciting is happening in the area of the arts and music.
For many decades now the ultra-Orthodox religious clerics have been insisting that live music, theater, cinema and dance are all anti-Islamic. When they came to power in 1979, local extremists seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca and accused the House of Saud of catering to decadent western culture. The House of Saud, sensing that this was no passing fad, then took a swift turn to the right, and one of the first sacrifices was the arts. Suddenly the cinema, music and much of the visual arts were banned. Gender mixing was also forbidden. Musical instruments were banned, and if you were discovered to have one in your possession, it was smashed right before your eyes. Not only was the playing of instruments in groups banned, but also music lessons and keyboards were outlawed. And this was the way things were until 2019, when suddenly the Crown Prince began to consolidate his power, and then began to encourage the embracing of art, music and cinema. This is all part of his plan to transform the kingdom and its economy, which has been completely dependent upon oil for revenue. By diversifying the culture, the Crown Prince also hopes to diversify the economy and thus bring new life (and revenue) into the country. Within the past year such notables as Lionel Richie and Andrea Bocelli have been invited to perform in a glitzy hall in the midst of the Saudi desert. And, as Lionel Richie said, “Things here will never be the same again.”
It is hard to imagine Lionel Richie strolling up and down the stage in the middle of the Saudi desert, yelling at the top of his lungs, “I want some pandemonium.” At first all the robed men and women would do is gently sway back and forth. A few clapped to the beat, but it was all pretty tame. Finally, on the fourth song, one woman took the plunge. Running down the stairs, she moved herself right in front of the orchestra. Then another woman came, then another and another. Finally, a third of the audience was shouting, twisting, singing in unison, “She’s a brick house. She’s mighty-mighty.” It is certainly not what you would expect in conservative Saudi Arabia.
So, what is going on and why? Some cynically suggest that the Crown Prince is trying to deflect attention away from all his anti-democratic behaviors and policies. And that may indeed be the case. But it is hard to deny that once the arts are allowed expression, there are changes which cannot so easily be denied or controlled. After all, creativity and self-expression are usually the enemies of authoritarian regimes. We also believe that the arts are humanizing. I have never understood how the Nazis appeared to be such art lovers, while stealing from the great European art museums and collectors for their own private possession. Those in charge of concentration camps could weep at the beauty of a Bach cantata while murdering the prisoners in their charge. What did the beauty of art and music do for them? If beauty is indeed a pathway toward God, as the church has taught and supported, it is not a guaranteed path, as history attests. But we can always hope that the arts will prod people to grow and change toward compassion and kindness.
In 2017 The King Abdulaziz World Center for World Culture opened in eastern Saudi Arabia with a museum, cinema, theater and art gallery. Not only are works from local artists being sought, but also international artists are offered space to show their art. One such work, called “Sorry/I Forgive You” is by the Libyan Canadian artist Arwa Abouon. Notice that both a man and a woman are the forgiver as well as the forgiven. Other Saudi cities are hosting exhibitions of international artists, who are openly political, expressing opinions on social inequality, consumerism and injustice. From a western point of view, this is pretty tame, but not in a controlled society like Saudi Arabia.
One of the most important stated goals is to introduce music and the arts at an early age to encourage the creation of local Saudi art as well as creative and critical thinking. This is new for a society that has been completely comfortable with government jobs, whose income was guaranteed by oil. Saudis are now beginning to flock to live concerts, where they can hear musicians, who are self-taught, because there have been no music teachers and lessons. And they are discovering that music is a way of communicating and creating connections among people, who might not often speak to or interact with one another.
We do not know what the outcome of all this will be. It may be MORE than the House of Saud bargained for. In a society where houses are fenced in by concrete walls, to keep people separated from one another, the arts reach out and beyond, so new thoughts and ideas then have a chance to find their way in. And once ideas begin to freely flow, it is hard to stop them and even harder to control them. One man stood before a graffiti image of a 2015 work called, “Son of a Migrant From Syria,” featuring Steve Jobs carrying a sack over his left shoulder and an Apple II in his right hand. This was originally painted in the city of Calais in France, where there was a huge refugee camp. “So, what is this supposed to mean?” the man asked. A woman volunteer replied, “It’s about migrants,” she said. “Steve Jobs is of Syrian origin, and refugees and migrants can contribute and excel, just as Steve Jobs did.” “I did not realize,” he responded, “that art and graffiti could have a larger message.” And once that larger message is realized and embraced, life is never the same, whether in Saudi Arabia or our own nation.
Blessings,
Sandra
AT 3:00 O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING by Rev. Dr. Sandra L. Olsen 8/9/2020
Matthew 14: 22-33
Early in the morning: that is the time the text says that Jesus came walking on the water toward the disciples. The Greek literally says the third watch, which begins at 3 AM, so it is possible that this story takes place at that bewitching hour, when we human beings can find ourselves assaulted by fears and worries that appear less critical in the daylight. At 3 AM our failures look worse and our successes less impressive. In those early morning hours depression weighs on hearts, and despair tempts the soul. The American writer, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his short story, “The Crack Up,” “In the real dark night of the soul it is always 3 o’clock in the morning.”
3:00 o’clock in the morning: I read somewhere that experts negotiating with terrorists, who are holding hostages, prefer to negotiate at 3 or 4 AM, because at those hours, “every ideal and ideology go limp in the dark exhaustion of that hour.” As one poet (Wislawa Szymborska) put it, “The hour between night and day/ The hour between toss and turn/ No one feels fine at 4 o’clock in the morning.” And so is it any wonder that when Jesus came walking across the water toward the disciples at that early morning hour, they did not recognize him. They could not clearly see who was there, and so gripped by fear, they thought it was a ghost.
Now let’s review what has been going on in this section of Matthew’s gospel. Matthew is not necessarily telling a story in chronological order. He is trying to make certain points, and some of the points concern the community of faith out of which this gospel came. So, the writer is not only talking about Jesus and his disciples, but he is also talking about his particular community, this mixed group of gentiles and Jews, who were trying to be followers of Christ as they lived their lives around the year 80 or 85, when this gospel was written.
At the beginning of chapter 14 we learn that King Herod had John the Baptist killed, and when Jesus heard about it, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place, so he could be alone---to pray, to think, to ponder his next step. But, as we heard last week, the crowds followed him, and when he went ashore, hoping to be alone, there were crowds, who had come on foot, and so he taught and healed them, blessed the five loaves of bread and two fish and then told the disciples to distribute the food. So, note what is being said here. While Jesus is the source of the blessing, it is the job, the call of the disciples, his followers, to do the actual work of feeding. And this is exactly what they did. They fed the crowd.
After this feeding of the 5000, the text says, “Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side.” Getting into the boat and going to the other side was not the disciples’ idea. It was Jesus who commanded them to get into the boat. Remember, he wanted to have some time alone, and we are told in verse 27 that he went up the mountain by himself to pray. So, there his disciples are out in the boat without Jesus as they struggle to get across to the other side. But they are not making much progress, because there is a pretty strong headwind.
Now what is this boat? Remember, biblical stories are full of symbolism, so what might this boat symbolize? The church, this newly constituted community of faith that in Matthew’s day and time was also struggling against some pretty strong headwinds—serious tensions between gentile Christians and Jewish Christians. And so, Matthew tells us that the boat (the church) is not making much progress here, not only because of all the tension, but also because it fails to recognize who Jesus is and what it is he asks and demands. And as Jesus moves across the water, appearing to the disciples as a ghost, what does Peter say and do? He calls out, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”
Now Peter does not know for sure if it is Jesus, but he apparently believes that if it is, then Jesus would ask him to do something crazy like getting out of the boat and walking on water. Now it is easy for people to be distracted by this so called miracle of nature, walking on water, but the point here is not so much an actual miracle of nature, but rather, the important point is the movement out of the boat, out of the church into the water, an area, which symbolizes an uncomfortable and difficult place to be. Consider what the symbolism of the story is saying: Move out of the church, out of the comfort of your little community, into a wider world, into a territory, where you are not at all comfortable, places where you fear you will sink and drown. Jesus was not calling Peter to a place of comfort, but rather to a mission of discomfort, a place of new challenge and new possibility.
And of course, the church, then as now, always struggles with newness. If you look at the history of the Church, you can see the struggle all over the place. Think back to the days before the Reformation, when reading the Bible in the language of the people was considered a dangerous idea. John Wycliffe was burned at the stake for translating the bible into English. Martin Luther translated the bible into German, and he too would have burned had he not been protected by Frederick the Wise, one of the German electors, who helped to elect the Holy Roman Emperor.
Just last Sunday I listened online to the reading of a play, Martin Luther on Trial, and there is no doubt that Luther was filled with dangerous ideas. He did away, for example, with the sacrament of confession, teaching that Christians can directly confess to God without a priest as an intermediary. He also taught that salvation does not come from good works, but as a gift of grace through faith. But, make no mistake about it: Luther too had his doubts, and at 3 AM in the morning Satan often assailed him, Luther said. It was then, at that bewitching hour, when he wondered if he was doing the right thing. What makes you think you are right, Dr. Luther, when the Church has been teaching its truth for 1500 years, Satan demanded to know. How do you know you have the truth? And at 3:00 in the morning, Luther was not confident he had an answer.
Consider the Church during the period of the Civil War. We all know about the split between the North and the South, but there were churches whose clergy had different perspectives on slavery in the same city. While The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn was passionately opposed to slavery, The Rev. Joel Parker of The Fourth Ave. Presbyterian Church in New York, believed slavery was ordained by God. And there were a whole lot of people, clergy as well as lay, who just wanted to avoid the topic, because it was so upsetting and complicated. They did not know what to do or how to think.
And one of these tentative church members, by the name of Jeremiah Morse, suddenly found himself awakened by a knock at his door at 3 AM. It was a neighbor who had with him a mother and her two children, trying to escape’s slavery’s grasp through the Underground Railroad. They needed help---food and money, and the neighbor was asking for help on their behalf. They need more than I have, he said. Can you help them? And Jeremiah Morse, who had never been sure about slavery, suddenly at 3 AM, found his conscience stirred in a way it had never before been stirred. And so, began his work with the Underground Railroad. Years later he pondered what he would have done had it been the clear light of day when he was asked for help. In the dead darkness of night, I was suddenly haunted by the thought that this might be God knocking at my door, and so rather than shutting God out, I let God in.
In this morning’s lesson from Matthew, note well where Jesus is. While he made his disciples get into the boat, Jesus did not get in with them. He came to them on the water, reminding his disciples and us that the comfortable and the familiar are not always the places God meets us and calls us to be. So, in our lives today, as the church and as individuals, we can ask ourselves: where might be the places of discomfort and anxiety, where Jesus is calling us to go?
Matthew 14: 22-33
Early in the morning: that is the time the text says that Jesus came walking on the water toward the disciples. The Greek literally says the third watch, which begins at 3 AM, so it is possible that this story takes place at that bewitching hour, when we human beings can find ourselves assaulted by fears and worries that appear less critical in the daylight. At 3 AM our failures look worse and our successes less impressive. In those early morning hours depression weighs on hearts, and despair tempts the soul. The American writer, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his short story, “The Crack Up,” “In the real dark night of the soul it is always 3 o’clock in the morning.”
3:00 o’clock in the morning: I read somewhere that experts negotiating with terrorists, who are holding hostages, prefer to negotiate at 3 or 4 AM, because at those hours, “every ideal and ideology go limp in the dark exhaustion of that hour.” As one poet (Wislawa Szymborska) put it, “The hour between night and day/ The hour between toss and turn/ No one feels fine at 4 o’clock in the morning.” And so is it any wonder that when Jesus came walking across the water toward the disciples at that early morning hour, they did not recognize him. They could not clearly see who was there, and so gripped by fear, they thought it was a ghost.
Now let’s review what has been going on in this section of Matthew’s gospel. Matthew is not necessarily telling a story in chronological order. He is trying to make certain points, and some of the points concern the community of faith out of which this gospel came. So, the writer is not only talking about Jesus and his disciples, but he is also talking about his particular community, this mixed group of gentiles and Jews, who were trying to be followers of Christ as they lived their lives around the year 80 or 85, when this gospel was written.
At the beginning of chapter 14 we learn that King Herod had John the Baptist killed, and when Jesus heard about it, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place, so he could be alone---to pray, to think, to ponder his next step. But, as we heard last week, the crowds followed him, and when he went ashore, hoping to be alone, there were crowds, who had come on foot, and so he taught and healed them, blessed the five loaves of bread and two fish and then told the disciples to distribute the food. So, note what is being said here. While Jesus is the source of the blessing, it is the job, the call of the disciples, his followers, to do the actual work of feeding. And this is exactly what they did. They fed the crowd.
After this feeding of the 5000, the text says, “Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side.” Getting into the boat and going to the other side was not the disciples’ idea. It was Jesus who commanded them to get into the boat. Remember, he wanted to have some time alone, and we are told in verse 27 that he went up the mountain by himself to pray. So, there his disciples are out in the boat without Jesus as they struggle to get across to the other side. But they are not making much progress, because there is a pretty strong headwind.
Now what is this boat? Remember, biblical stories are full of symbolism, so what might this boat symbolize? The church, this newly constituted community of faith that in Matthew’s day and time was also struggling against some pretty strong headwinds—serious tensions between gentile Christians and Jewish Christians. And so, Matthew tells us that the boat (the church) is not making much progress here, not only because of all the tension, but also because it fails to recognize who Jesus is and what it is he asks and demands. And as Jesus moves across the water, appearing to the disciples as a ghost, what does Peter say and do? He calls out, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”
Now Peter does not know for sure if it is Jesus, but he apparently believes that if it is, then Jesus would ask him to do something crazy like getting out of the boat and walking on water. Now it is easy for people to be distracted by this so called miracle of nature, walking on water, but the point here is not so much an actual miracle of nature, but rather, the important point is the movement out of the boat, out of the church into the water, an area, which symbolizes an uncomfortable and difficult place to be. Consider what the symbolism of the story is saying: Move out of the church, out of the comfort of your little community, into a wider world, into a territory, where you are not at all comfortable, places where you fear you will sink and drown. Jesus was not calling Peter to a place of comfort, but rather to a mission of discomfort, a place of new challenge and new possibility.
And of course, the church, then as now, always struggles with newness. If you look at the history of the Church, you can see the struggle all over the place. Think back to the days before the Reformation, when reading the Bible in the language of the people was considered a dangerous idea. John Wycliffe was burned at the stake for translating the bible into English. Martin Luther translated the bible into German, and he too would have burned had he not been protected by Frederick the Wise, one of the German electors, who helped to elect the Holy Roman Emperor.
Just last Sunday I listened online to the reading of a play, Martin Luther on Trial, and there is no doubt that Luther was filled with dangerous ideas. He did away, for example, with the sacrament of confession, teaching that Christians can directly confess to God without a priest as an intermediary. He also taught that salvation does not come from good works, but as a gift of grace through faith. But, make no mistake about it: Luther too had his doubts, and at 3 AM in the morning Satan often assailed him, Luther said. It was then, at that bewitching hour, when he wondered if he was doing the right thing. What makes you think you are right, Dr. Luther, when the Church has been teaching its truth for 1500 years, Satan demanded to know. How do you know you have the truth? And at 3:00 in the morning, Luther was not confident he had an answer.
Consider the Church during the period of the Civil War. We all know about the split between the North and the South, but there were churches whose clergy had different perspectives on slavery in the same city. While The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn was passionately opposed to slavery, The Rev. Joel Parker of The Fourth Ave. Presbyterian Church in New York, believed slavery was ordained by God. And there were a whole lot of people, clergy as well as lay, who just wanted to avoid the topic, because it was so upsetting and complicated. They did not know what to do or how to think.
And one of these tentative church members, by the name of Jeremiah Morse, suddenly found himself awakened by a knock at his door at 3 AM. It was a neighbor who had with him a mother and her two children, trying to escape’s slavery’s grasp through the Underground Railroad. They needed help---food and money, and the neighbor was asking for help on their behalf. They need more than I have, he said. Can you help them? And Jeremiah Morse, who had never been sure about slavery, suddenly at 3 AM, found his conscience stirred in a way it had never before been stirred. And so, began his work with the Underground Railroad. Years later he pondered what he would have done had it been the clear light of day when he was asked for help. In the dead darkness of night, I was suddenly haunted by the thought that this might be God knocking at my door, and so rather than shutting God out, I let God in.
In this morning’s lesson from Matthew, note well where Jesus is. While he made his disciples get into the boat, Jesus did not get in with them. He came to them on the water, reminding his disciples and us that the comfortable and the familiar are not always the places God meets us and calls us to be. So, in our lives today, as the church and as individuals, we can ask ourselves: where might be the places of discomfort and anxiety, where Jesus is calling us to go?
July 29, 2020
Dear Friends in Christ,
Not too long ago, I came across an interesting article in the journal,“The Christian Century,” which referred to a poll taken by the University of Chicago Divinity School and the Associated Press Center for Public Affairs. It found that 31% of Americans, who believe in God, feel strongly that Covid-19 is a sign from God telling humanity that it must change. The same number feel this sentiment somewhat, so 62% believe God is trying to tell us something. While evangelical Christians are more likely to believe this strongly (43%), Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants (which includes us) come in at 28% feeling strongly with 33% of main-liners feeling this somewhat. But 37% of mainline Protestants, 35% of Roman Catholics and 58% of the religiously unaffiliated do not believe God is trying to tell humanity anything at all through this virus. So, consider: where do you stand? Do you think God is trying to tell us anything? And what might God be trying to say?
An Anglican priest at St. George’s Anglican Church in Ontario said her greatest fear is that Covid-19 will change nothing. It seems, she said, that after every major disaster there is this overwhelming feeling that things will become different. Many felt this way after 9/11, after all the mass shootings, the forest fires and hurricanes, believed to be a result of climate change, and most recently the killing of black men and women by police. So, the feeling goes, surely things will change after all this.
But will they? When six year old children were shot at Sandy Hook, many (including me) felt this was indeed the tipping point. I thought Americans just would not tolerate such innocence being brutally murdered, but we did and we do. And now with the Black Lives Matter Movement rising in temperature and tempo, we can rightly wonder the same thing. Will the call for change be sustained? Will it lead to real change, both in the heart and in the systems that keep racism alive? And what about the virus? What are we learning, and will that knowledge and understanding lead to significant change?
A Protestant minister, when referring to this time we are now living through, referred to it as apocalyptic. You might have heard this word mentioned in church, referring biblically to times of radical shift and change. The Book of Revelation is called apocalyptic, but not because it predicts what the end of history will look like. The word itself means an unveiling, a time when that which is hidden and out of sight becomes blatantly present and clear, so denial is much harder to achieve. But we human beings are masters of denial. As Freud once taught, denial is one of our most effective coping mechanisms, a tool of self-defense. And yet there are these times when even denial runs its course and is finished. When you are facing a pile of dead bodies now over 150,000, and the body count is disproportionately persons of color and poverty, it is harder to deny that this virus has something to do with how resources and health care are distributed in our nation. When you actually see on your television screen a man pinned down, crying out that he cannot breathe, while a knee is indifferently placed on his neck and then you witness the outrage, the the seething anger and resentment and the protests that go on day after day, it is hard to deny that something major is happening. We are seeing realities that have been among us for quite some time, yet we did not see, or did not want to see.
I do not believe for one instance that God sends disasters (like a virus) to teach us something, but that does not mean that when disaster strikes there are not lessons to be learned. God’s voice may speak to us in and through the disaster without God directly causing it to befall us. We are certainly seeing what happens when our society fails to invest in public health. Over the past few decades there has been a marked decrease in the number of people employed in public health and the amount of money so allocated, perhaps as much as a 25% reduction. Each year state and city health budgets are reduced, since unlike the federal budget, a deficit budget cannot be passed. And so, when a health crisis occurs, like Covid-19, what do we think is going to happen? Not enough masks, surgical gowns, not enough coordination of services with some hospitals, serving the indigent, completely overwhelmed, while other private, wealthy hospitals, serving the well insured, are nowhere near capacity.
One hardly needs to be a Christian to acknowledge all what is happening before our eyes, but the Christian doctrine of the tribune God reminds us that God is revealed and known in relationship, traditionally presented: God as Father, Son and Spirit. And it is this God, who shows us that we, made in God’s image, are also made for and in relationship. And when we deny this, we deny a central truth of our humanity, and the result of that denial is quite literally death. For months now people have been saying, “We are all in this together,” but the truth is that some people are more in it than others---the elderly, the poor, people of color. While we hang signs thanking essential workers, we are perfectly comfortable paying them paltry wages and denying them paid sick time and vacation. While God calls us to be together in relationship, we do a very good job of separating ourselves from one another. And for many people, there is no shame at all in this separation. In fact, this is the way they want it, since it preserves the privilege that is theirs (and ours) by human (not divine) design.
I am not sure what the 62% of believers actually think God is trying to teach humanity through this pandemic. As I said earlier, God can teach us something through an event without directly causing the event. If God indeed acts in history, as our faith proclaims, events can become the lens through which we see and hear God. And God may be reminding us that we are all creatures of this earth, who breathe air, drink water, cultivate the land that we can eat, work play and raise the next generations. So, are we going to do all this with greater justice, equity and compassion? Or are we going to continue on a path that preserves the privileges that so many take for granted?
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
Dear Friends in Christ,
Not too long ago, I came across an interesting article in the journal,“The Christian Century,” which referred to a poll taken by the University of Chicago Divinity School and the Associated Press Center for Public Affairs. It found that 31% of Americans, who believe in God, feel strongly that Covid-19 is a sign from God telling humanity that it must change. The same number feel this sentiment somewhat, so 62% believe God is trying to tell us something. While evangelical Christians are more likely to believe this strongly (43%), Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants (which includes us) come in at 28% feeling strongly with 33% of main-liners feeling this somewhat. But 37% of mainline Protestants, 35% of Roman Catholics and 58% of the religiously unaffiliated do not believe God is trying to tell humanity anything at all through this virus. So, consider: where do you stand? Do you think God is trying to tell us anything? And what might God be trying to say?
An Anglican priest at St. George’s Anglican Church in Ontario said her greatest fear is that Covid-19 will change nothing. It seems, she said, that after every major disaster there is this overwhelming feeling that things will become different. Many felt this way after 9/11, after all the mass shootings, the forest fires and hurricanes, believed to be a result of climate change, and most recently the killing of black men and women by police. So, the feeling goes, surely things will change after all this.
But will they? When six year old children were shot at Sandy Hook, many (including me) felt this was indeed the tipping point. I thought Americans just would not tolerate such innocence being brutally murdered, but we did and we do. And now with the Black Lives Matter Movement rising in temperature and tempo, we can rightly wonder the same thing. Will the call for change be sustained? Will it lead to real change, both in the heart and in the systems that keep racism alive? And what about the virus? What are we learning, and will that knowledge and understanding lead to significant change?
A Protestant minister, when referring to this time we are now living through, referred to it as apocalyptic. You might have heard this word mentioned in church, referring biblically to times of radical shift and change. The Book of Revelation is called apocalyptic, but not because it predicts what the end of history will look like. The word itself means an unveiling, a time when that which is hidden and out of sight becomes blatantly present and clear, so denial is much harder to achieve. But we human beings are masters of denial. As Freud once taught, denial is one of our most effective coping mechanisms, a tool of self-defense. And yet there are these times when even denial runs its course and is finished. When you are facing a pile of dead bodies now over 150,000, and the body count is disproportionately persons of color and poverty, it is harder to deny that this virus has something to do with how resources and health care are distributed in our nation. When you actually see on your television screen a man pinned down, crying out that he cannot breathe, while a knee is indifferently placed on his neck and then you witness the outrage, the the seething anger and resentment and the protests that go on day after day, it is hard to deny that something major is happening. We are seeing realities that have been among us for quite some time, yet we did not see, or did not want to see.
I do not believe for one instance that God sends disasters (like a virus) to teach us something, but that does not mean that when disaster strikes there are not lessons to be learned. God’s voice may speak to us in and through the disaster without God directly causing it to befall us. We are certainly seeing what happens when our society fails to invest in public health. Over the past few decades there has been a marked decrease in the number of people employed in public health and the amount of money so allocated, perhaps as much as a 25% reduction. Each year state and city health budgets are reduced, since unlike the federal budget, a deficit budget cannot be passed. And so, when a health crisis occurs, like Covid-19, what do we think is going to happen? Not enough masks, surgical gowns, not enough coordination of services with some hospitals, serving the indigent, completely overwhelmed, while other private, wealthy hospitals, serving the well insured, are nowhere near capacity.
One hardly needs to be a Christian to acknowledge all what is happening before our eyes, but the Christian doctrine of the tribune God reminds us that God is revealed and known in relationship, traditionally presented: God as Father, Son and Spirit. And it is this God, who shows us that we, made in God’s image, are also made for and in relationship. And when we deny this, we deny a central truth of our humanity, and the result of that denial is quite literally death. For months now people have been saying, “We are all in this together,” but the truth is that some people are more in it than others---the elderly, the poor, people of color. While we hang signs thanking essential workers, we are perfectly comfortable paying them paltry wages and denying them paid sick time and vacation. While God calls us to be together in relationship, we do a very good job of separating ourselves from one another. And for many people, there is no shame at all in this separation. In fact, this is the way they want it, since it preserves the privilege that is theirs (and ours) by human (not divine) design.
I am not sure what the 62% of believers actually think God is trying to teach humanity through this pandemic. As I said earlier, God can teach us something through an event without directly causing the event. If God indeed acts in history, as our faith proclaims, events can become the lens through which we see and hear God. And God may be reminding us that we are all creatures of this earth, who breathe air, drink water, cultivate the land that we can eat, work play and raise the next generations. So, are we going to do all this with greater justice, equity and compassion? Or are we going to continue on a path that preserves the privileges that so many take for granted?
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
Challenging Words: Sin & Grace by: Rev. Dr. Sandra L. Olsen 7/26/2020
Matthew 13: 31-33,
Romans 8: 28-39
Have you ever had a profound experience of sin---not necessarily your own, but an experience that shook you to the smithy of your being, when you recognized that what you were witnessing or realizing was sin? I think for many of us the experience of witnessing George Floyd’s murder was such a time. I recall visiting the concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland and being overwhelmed not only by the sense of evil, but also sin---the recognition that real, flesh and blood human beings committed these brutal acts of atrocity upon other human beings. Now I want to ask you to consider something else, if you can. Have you ever had a profound sense of your own sinfulness---the recognition that you have deeply transgressed against the moral or divine law?
When I was 19 and a sophomore at the U. of Chicago, I became acquainted with a group of Roman Catholic seminarians, who were working on behalf of social justice issues. I was young, impressionable and very curious, so this one 25 year old seminarian, doing work in a Chicago jail, got me enough clearance to accompany him. I could not visit any prisoners, but I was able to see what the jail was like. Well, soon after entering we heard this screaming and crying, and as it turned out a young woman had just tried to hang herself, and was being dragged away, none too gently, I might add. Now there was simply no room in my very limited experience to integrate what I had just witnessed. I was shattered. But it was not the indifferent cruelty I had seen, but rather it was my own witness that tortured me. I felt like a voyeur; there, not out of compassion for the imprisoned, no, it was curiosity. Just who did I think I was, a spoiled brat, gawking at someone else’s pain and misfortune, because I was curious? For days I could neither sleep nor eat, so finally in desperation I went to speak with one of the university therapists, but we got nowhere. She could not understand what it was I felt guilty about, and so I abruptly terminated. But since I was still in great pain and turmoil, I went to speak with one of the University chaplains, who like me was Presbyterian.
He listened to me very carefully and rather than telling me I had done nothing wrong, nothing to be ashamed of, he told me I was describing perfectly what it means to be in a state of sin. St Augustine could not have described it better than you. And then he gave me to read one of the greatest sermons of the 20th century, Paul Tillich’s You Are Accepted. I took it back to my apartment and read it over and over again. There is one particular part I found most helpful, and I would like to share it with you this morning:
We cannot transform our lives unless we allow them to be transformed by a stroke of grace. It happens or it does not happen. And certainly it does not happen if we try to force it upon ourselves, just as it will not happen so long as we think in our self-complacency, that we have no need of it. Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life. It strikes us when the longed for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying, You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you and the name of which you do not know.”
Those words for me were healing. I learned that sin is not so much about moral guilt and failing as it is about estrangement and separation. And I learned also that our consciousness of sin grows to the extent that we also experience grace. The Apostle Paul understood this, for he said many times, “where sin abounds, grace abounds even more”---meaning that without grace there is no recognition of sin. And indeed, when I visited the concentration camps, I was haunted and sickened by the realization that the Nazi High Command had kept copiously detailed records of their crimes, believing that history would praise them for murderous deeds. They neither recognized their sin, nor did they recognize grace. They inhabited what for them was a graceless world. They were completely blind.
When we consider Matthew’s gospel and the struggle of that community to find their way toward a new beginning, leading, they hoped to the Kingdom of Heaven, we can understand their concern for certain rules and regulations. The Jewish Christians still wanted to be Jews, following the ways of the law as a means to righteousness, and so they had a catalogue of do’s and don’ts, acts that in their world would have been treated as sin---failure, for example, to wash one’s hands in a prescribed fashion, or pay the required temple tax or offer the proper sacrifice. And then there were all the 613 commandments that can be found in the pages of the Old Testament, which also prescribed acts of charity toward the widow and the orphan. But the truth is that one can do all those things, be pious and generous and yet still feel alienated, still feel separated---divided from others, divided within the self and yes, divided from God, known not as some potentate, issuing harsh commands, but God as the ground of being-itself. And we can feel our alienation from God without being morally guilty of any act. As the theologian, Paul Tillich, once said, “Before sin is ever an act, it is a state—a state of being alienated and separated.”
The reason so many people have a problem with the word sin and the reason many churches like ours have done away with regular prayers of confession is because too many people think of sin as a list of don’ts, a list of moral failures about which they should hang their heads in shame. Too many Christians hear and learn the language of sin without first learning the language of grace, the conviction of God’s presence, love and mercy. When grace-filled language and experience are learned first, we come to recognize sin later as a denial or rejection of the grace that always surrounds us and from which finally there is no escape. This is what the Apostle Paul means in his Letter to the Romans, when he said, “nothing in all the creation can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.”
We all have had the experience of alienation and separation, even if we do not consciously recognize it. We know what it means to be separated from others, as I knew at 19, when I felt I had violated another life by being a prurient voyeur to unbearable pain. We know what it means to feel separation from loved ones when sometimes the demands they make upon us seem to wring us dry. We have, we fear, nothing more to give. And so, in self-defense, we withdraw, we separate. And who has not sometimes experienced the divisions within ourselves, the self-doubt and self-loathing, when we do not live up to our expectations. Who does not know the separation from God, from the Ground of Being, when we find ourselves wondering it there really is any purpose to life? Does anything truly matter beyond the boundaries of our own small worlds? Is there something, someone whom we can really trust? To answer No to any of those questions is, as Luther called it, the sin of unbelief. This is not about intellectual assent or understanding. It is about the attempt to remove oneself from the very ground and purpose of being-itself, which is God and to make of oneself the final measure of worth and meaning.
But in spite of all that failure and confusion there can be a moment of deep grace, when we are accepted by that which is greater than we. After such an experience, Paul Tillich preached in his great sermon, “we may not be better than before; we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed. In that moment grace conquers sin and reconciliation bridges the gulf of estrangement. And nothing is demanded of this experience: no religious, moral or intellectual presupposition: nothing but acceptance.
Matthew 13: 31-33,
Romans 8: 28-39
Have you ever had a profound experience of sin---not necessarily your own, but an experience that shook you to the smithy of your being, when you recognized that what you were witnessing or realizing was sin? I think for many of us the experience of witnessing George Floyd’s murder was such a time. I recall visiting the concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland and being overwhelmed not only by the sense of evil, but also sin---the recognition that real, flesh and blood human beings committed these brutal acts of atrocity upon other human beings. Now I want to ask you to consider something else, if you can. Have you ever had a profound sense of your own sinfulness---the recognition that you have deeply transgressed against the moral or divine law?
When I was 19 and a sophomore at the U. of Chicago, I became acquainted with a group of Roman Catholic seminarians, who were working on behalf of social justice issues. I was young, impressionable and very curious, so this one 25 year old seminarian, doing work in a Chicago jail, got me enough clearance to accompany him. I could not visit any prisoners, but I was able to see what the jail was like. Well, soon after entering we heard this screaming and crying, and as it turned out a young woman had just tried to hang herself, and was being dragged away, none too gently, I might add. Now there was simply no room in my very limited experience to integrate what I had just witnessed. I was shattered. But it was not the indifferent cruelty I had seen, but rather it was my own witness that tortured me. I felt like a voyeur; there, not out of compassion for the imprisoned, no, it was curiosity. Just who did I think I was, a spoiled brat, gawking at someone else’s pain and misfortune, because I was curious? For days I could neither sleep nor eat, so finally in desperation I went to speak with one of the university therapists, but we got nowhere. She could not understand what it was I felt guilty about, and so I abruptly terminated. But since I was still in great pain and turmoil, I went to speak with one of the University chaplains, who like me was Presbyterian.
He listened to me very carefully and rather than telling me I had done nothing wrong, nothing to be ashamed of, he told me I was describing perfectly what it means to be in a state of sin. St Augustine could not have described it better than you. And then he gave me to read one of the greatest sermons of the 20th century, Paul Tillich’s You Are Accepted. I took it back to my apartment and read it over and over again. There is one particular part I found most helpful, and I would like to share it with you this morning:
We cannot transform our lives unless we allow them to be transformed by a stroke of grace. It happens or it does not happen. And certainly it does not happen if we try to force it upon ourselves, just as it will not happen so long as we think in our self-complacency, that we have no need of it. Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life. It strikes us when the longed for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying, You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you and the name of which you do not know.”
Those words for me were healing. I learned that sin is not so much about moral guilt and failing as it is about estrangement and separation. And I learned also that our consciousness of sin grows to the extent that we also experience grace. The Apostle Paul understood this, for he said many times, “where sin abounds, grace abounds even more”---meaning that without grace there is no recognition of sin. And indeed, when I visited the concentration camps, I was haunted and sickened by the realization that the Nazi High Command had kept copiously detailed records of their crimes, believing that history would praise them for murderous deeds. They neither recognized their sin, nor did they recognize grace. They inhabited what for them was a graceless world. They were completely blind.
When we consider Matthew’s gospel and the struggle of that community to find their way toward a new beginning, leading, they hoped to the Kingdom of Heaven, we can understand their concern for certain rules and regulations. The Jewish Christians still wanted to be Jews, following the ways of the law as a means to righteousness, and so they had a catalogue of do’s and don’ts, acts that in their world would have been treated as sin---failure, for example, to wash one’s hands in a prescribed fashion, or pay the required temple tax or offer the proper sacrifice. And then there were all the 613 commandments that can be found in the pages of the Old Testament, which also prescribed acts of charity toward the widow and the orphan. But the truth is that one can do all those things, be pious and generous and yet still feel alienated, still feel separated---divided from others, divided within the self and yes, divided from God, known not as some potentate, issuing harsh commands, but God as the ground of being-itself. And we can feel our alienation from God without being morally guilty of any act. As the theologian, Paul Tillich, once said, “Before sin is ever an act, it is a state—a state of being alienated and separated.”
The reason so many people have a problem with the word sin and the reason many churches like ours have done away with regular prayers of confession is because too many people think of sin as a list of don’ts, a list of moral failures about which they should hang their heads in shame. Too many Christians hear and learn the language of sin without first learning the language of grace, the conviction of God’s presence, love and mercy. When grace-filled language and experience are learned first, we come to recognize sin later as a denial or rejection of the grace that always surrounds us and from which finally there is no escape. This is what the Apostle Paul means in his Letter to the Romans, when he said, “nothing in all the creation can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.”
We all have had the experience of alienation and separation, even if we do not consciously recognize it. We know what it means to be separated from others, as I knew at 19, when I felt I had violated another life by being a prurient voyeur to unbearable pain. We know what it means to feel separation from loved ones when sometimes the demands they make upon us seem to wring us dry. We have, we fear, nothing more to give. And so, in self-defense, we withdraw, we separate. And who has not sometimes experienced the divisions within ourselves, the self-doubt and self-loathing, when we do not live up to our expectations. Who does not know the separation from God, from the Ground of Being, when we find ourselves wondering it there really is any purpose to life? Does anything truly matter beyond the boundaries of our own small worlds? Is there something, someone whom we can really trust? To answer No to any of those questions is, as Luther called it, the sin of unbelief. This is not about intellectual assent or understanding. It is about the attempt to remove oneself from the very ground and purpose of being-itself, which is God and to make of oneself the final measure of worth and meaning.
But in spite of all that failure and confusion there can be a moment of deep grace, when we are accepted by that which is greater than we. After such an experience, Paul Tillich preached in his great sermon, “we may not be better than before; we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed. In that moment grace conquers sin and reconciliation bridges the gulf of estrangement. And nothing is demanded of this experience: no religious, moral or intellectual presupposition: nothing but acceptance.
MIXED ALL TOGETHER by: Rev. Dr. Sandra L. Olsen 7/19/20
Matthew 13: 24-30; 36-43
Some months ago, right before the pandemic shut life down, one of my college friends called me about something that happened to her husband, which she thought I, as a minister, would find quite amusing. Her husband, Randy, when coming out of Home Depot, was approached by a man, who asked him a question “Are you wheat or are you a tare?” “What’s a tare?” Randy asked. “A weed,” said the man. “Don’t you know your bible?” “I guess not,” Randy replied, heading toward his car. “Well, what are you? Wheat or a weed?” Randy just shrugged his shoulders. The gentleman was in no mood for non-commitment, so he persisted. “Don’t you know what you are?” “I guess”, Randy replied, “I’m a mixture of both,” and then as quickly as he could, he made his way toward the car. Calling after him, the man yelled, “There is no mixing in God’s kingdom. You are either one or the other. "Well, in me everything is mixed together,” Randy insisted as he slammed the car door and drove away.
Religion (and it does not matter which one) often is not receptive to this mixing together, since so much effort is spent trying to sort everything out, including people. Religion has often been in the business of making distinctions and separations: the profane from the sacred, the pure from the impure, truth from falsehood, evil from good. And historically religious communities have often been concerned about who is really the true believer, the true follower, the true disciple, whose heart is turned toward God in the right or righteous way. And Matthew’s community was no different. The community out of which the Gospel of Matthew came was very much concerned with questions of purity. Who truly belonged to Christ and who should be cast out?
Now understand this gospel was not written by one of Jesus’ disciples, named Matthew. Most likely it was written sometime in the 80’s by someone, who probably used Matthew’s name to give credence and weight to his words. And this person, whoever he was, came out of a particular community, a particular context, the way we all come out of particular communities, expressive of certain values, concerns and interests. So biblical study is always concerned with context, with wanting to know what the overriding questions and concerns were of the community out of which the Gospel came.
Matthew’s world was a Jewish one, and so we see there a great deal of concern with law and righteousness. Jesus is portrayed in Matthew as the new Moses, who comes not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, and the law Jesus brings is a higher, stricter one than the law Moses brought. But as Jewish as Matthew’s community was, it was also in the unique situation of being challenged from the outside by gentiles, who were also followers of Jesus. So, these Jewish followers of Jesus had to decide what to do with these gentile followers. Their mission ultimately became one of opening their doors to gentiles, but as you can imagine, this was not an easy or comfortable thing to do. It meant that their way of being religious was in transition. And transition is never easy, because it forces people to ask questions about their relationship to the past while forging ahead to an unsettled and unknown future---not unlike what we are now going through in our nation, concerning issues of racial justice. And because of Matthew’s unique situation, where past and future were meeting and colliding, this Gospel is very much concerned with the question of fulfillment. How is the promise God made to the Jewish people being fulfilled? That’s what Matthew’s community wanted to know.
They believed the promise made to Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation; they knew about the glorious past of King David and Solomon, when the northern and southern kingdoms were united, and they looked to a Messiah to bring back that glory. But Matthew’s Gospel was written sometime around the year 80 or 85, ten years or so after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple by the Romans in 70, so from where these Jews stood, things looked very different from the original promise. Not only was there no united kingdom and kingship, but their Messiah did not look like a conventional Messiah. And now gentiles were moving into the community, becoming followers of Jesus Christ while many Jews were rejecting Jesus.
So, what was the Matthean community to make of this new situation? The old distinctions between pure and impure simply could not hold in this new world. The coming of God’s Kingdom in which everything appeared to be mixed up was very different from the Kingdom they had expected in which everything would be separated. And so, the parable of the wheat and the weeds is an expression of this concern. Not really so different from our situation today. Our nation does not look like it did at its founding, nor does it even look like it did 40, 50, 60 years ago.
But the question put to us by the parable is not the one addressed to Randy: Are you a weed or wheat? The parable makes clear that the servants do not posses the necessary discerning capacity to answer that question. Oh, it is true that the servants say they can see the weeds, but their job is not to pull those weeds out. That is left for the judge to do. God in this parable is the one who sews the seed, knowing that bad seed will also grow, but notice that even God does not rush to judgment. Even God waits to see what happens. So, the question is not what you are now---a weed or wheat, but under whose reign do you labor? Under whose watch do you want to grow? To rush to judgment, to be so ready to condemn by pulling out the weeds before the harvest only compromises the harvest, only harms what is to come in the future. To rush to judgment, in fact, is to be on the side of the enemy, whose desire it is to grow division and death. The enemy plants the weeds and the temptation is to rush in with the cleavers to immediately remove what looks like weeds. But no, time and patience are required that the harvest may come to its full fruition.
When we put ourselves into Matthew’s world, we realize what a risk they took. The usual categories of pure and impure, clean and unclean, inside and outside, acceptable and unacceptable were breaking down, swept away by a future into which gentiles were coming. Jews and gentiles together in a new community! Who would have expected it? Who would have even wanted it? And yet, there it was---contrary to all expectations!
And this too is the point---contrary to our expectations, the future dawns in a new and different way. We so often think we see and understand what is happening, but our vision and our understanding are partial at best, and very likely distorted. The weeds in this parable were something called bearded darnel, which in the early stages of growth look just like wheat and grow just like wheat, but in reality are poisonous. And we can well imagine that some of the early Jewish followers of Jesus, seeing gentiles coming into their community, had the feeling that just maybe these gentiles would prove to be poison. There had always been these strict religious rules in Judaism about sorting and separating out: Jew and Gentile were not to mix, at least not religiously! So, what is happening? Does this mean that these gentiles are really poison, and in the end will be sorted out---thrown into the fire?
Well, I suppose some were tempted to come to that conclusion, confident they knew who and where the weeds were. But Matthew’s Gospel does something very interesting. It proclaims that God’s Kingdom is not only future but also present. And that means that the kingdom is present even when everything is all mixed up together, even when the wheat and weeds grow together. Maybe this isn’t how we think God should work. Maybe we think we would be a lot happier if God would do something right now about all the weeds in our midst.
I was thinking about this very question when I came upon an article in the Christian Century written by the cousin of Dep Middleton, who was the minister of Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, where on June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof shot and killed nine African Americans at a bible study. He entered as a stranger and was treated as a guest. Though he was white, and they were black, they did not attach stereotypes to him, but simply shared with him fellowship, prayer, worship and study. Dep, seated next to him, shared her bible, and she was apparently the first to be shot. We hardly know how to think about such evil, and certainly this passage from Matthew does not attempt to explain it. It simply says that this is the way the world is, and God’s kingdom, which is future but also present, is right in the midst of wheat and weeds growing together.
And there is something else to consider, which, I admit is a bit disturbing. The story gives us no clear criteria for judging between the wheat and the weeds. Only God truly knows what makes for goodness or for evil. Only God can judge. Of course, in this world and in our daily lives we must make all kinds of judgments; we have to make decisions about people, including their motivations and abilities. But these are always proximate decisions, never ultimate or final ones. Judging Dylann Roof guilty of murder does not mean he is unworthy of God’s grace. We judge as human beings and should never allow ourselves into believing that we see as God sees or know as God knows.
Matthew 13: 24-30; 36-43
Some months ago, right before the pandemic shut life down, one of my college friends called me about something that happened to her husband, which she thought I, as a minister, would find quite amusing. Her husband, Randy, when coming out of Home Depot, was approached by a man, who asked him a question “Are you wheat or are you a tare?” “What’s a tare?” Randy asked. “A weed,” said the man. “Don’t you know your bible?” “I guess not,” Randy replied, heading toward his car. “Well, what are you? Wheat or a weed?” Randy just shrugged his shoulders. The gentleman was in no mood for non-commitment, so he persisted. “Don’t you know what you are?” “I guess”, Randy replied, “I’m a mixture of both,” and then as quickly as he could, he made his way toward the car. Calling after him, the man yelled, “There is no mixing in God’s kingdom. You are either one or the other. "Well, in me everything is mixed together,” Randy insisted as he slammed the car door and drove away.
Religion (and it does not matter which one) often is not receptive to this mixing together, since so much effort is spent trying to sort everything out, including people. Religion has often been in the business of making distinctions and separations: the profane from the sacred, the pure from the impure, truth from falsehood, evil from good. And historically religious communities have often been concerned about who is really the true believer, the true follower, the true disciple, whose heart is turned toward God in the right or righteous way. And Matthew’s community was no different. The community out of which the Gospel of Matthew came was very much concerned with questions of purity. Who truly belonged to Christ and who should be cast out?
Now understand this gospel was not written by one of Jesus’ disciples, named Matthew. Most likely it was written sometime in the 80’s by someone, who probably used Matthew’s name to give credence and weight to his words. And this person, whoever he was, came out of a particular community, a particular context, the way we all come out of particular communities, expressive of certain values, concerns and interests. So biblical study is always concerned with context, with wanting to know what the overriding questions and concerns were of the community out of which the Gospel came.
Matthew’s world was a Jewish one, and so we see there a great deal of concern with law and righteousness. Jesus is portrayed in Matthew as the new Moses, who comes not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, and the law Jesus brings is a higher, stricter one than the law Moses brought. But as Jewish as Matthew’s community was, it was also in the unique situation of being challenged from the outside by gentiles, who were also followers of Jesus. So, these Jewish followers of Jesus had to decide what to do with these gentile followers. Their mission ultimately became one of opening their doors to gentiles, but as you can imagine, this was not an easy or comfortable thing to do. It meant that their way of being religious was in transition. And transition is never easy, because it forces people to ask questions about their relationship to the past while forging ahead to an unsettled and unknown future---not unlike what we are now going through in our nation, concerning issues of racial justice. And because of Matthew’s unique situation, where past and future were meeting and colliding, this Gospel is very much concerned with the question of fulfillment. How is the promise God made to the Jewish people being fulfilled? That’s what Matthew’s community wanted to know.
They believed the promise made to Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation; they knew about the glorious past of King David and Solomon, when the northern and southern kingdoms were united, and they looked to a Messiah to bring back that glory. But Matthew’s Gospel was written sometime around the year 80 or 85, ten years or so after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple by the Romans in 70, so from where these Jews stood, things looked very different from the original promise. Not only was there no united kingdom and kingship, but their Messiah did not look like a conventional Messiah. And now gentiles were moving into the community, becoming followers of Jesus Christ while many Jews were rejecting Jesus.
So, what was the Matthean community to make of this new situation? The old distinctions between pure and impure simply could not hold in this new world. The coming of God’s Kingdom in which everything appeared to be mixed up was very different from the Kingdom they had expected in which everything would be separated. And so, the parable of the wheat and the weeds is an expression of this concern. Not really so different from our situation today. Our nation does not look like it did at its founding, nor does it even look like it did 40, 50, 60 years ago.
But the question put to us by the parable is not the one addressed to Randy: Are you a weed or wheat? The parable makes clear that the servants do not posses the necessary discerning capacity to answer that question. Oh, it is true that the servants say they can see the weeds, but their job is not to pull those weeds out. That is left for the judge to do. God in this parable is the one who sews the seed, knowing that bad seed will also grow, but notice that even God does not rush to judgment. Even God waits to see what happens. So, the question is not what you are now---a weed or wheat, but under whose reign do you labor? Under whose watch do you want to grow? To rush to judgment, to be so ready to condemn by pulling out the weeds before the harvest only compromises the harvest, only harms what is to come in the future. To rush to judgment, in fact, is to be on the side of the enemy, whose desire it is to grow division and death. The enemy plants the weeds and the temptation is to rush in with the cleavers to immediately remove what looks like weeds. But no, time and patience are required that the harvest may come to its full fruition.
When we put ourselves into Matthew’s world, we realize what a risk they took. The usual categories of pure and impure, clean and unclean, inside and outside, acceptable and unacceptable were breaking down, swept away by a future into which gentiles were coming. Jews and gentiles together in a new community! Who would have expected it? Who would have even wanted it? And yet, there it was---contrary to all expectations!
And this too is the point---contrary to our expectations, the future dawns in a new and different way. We so often think we see and understand what is happening, but our vision and our understanding are partial at best, and very likely distorted. The weeds in this parable were something called bearded darnel, which in the early stages of growth look just like wheat and grow just like wheat, but in reality are poisonous. And we can well imagine that some of the early Jewish followers of Jesus, seeing gentiles coming into their community, had the feeling that just maybe these gentiles would prove to be poison. There had always been these strict religious rules in Judaism about sorting and separating out: Jew and Gentile were not to mix, at least not religiously! So, what is happening? Does this mean that these gentiles are really poison, and in the end will be sorted out---thrown into the fire?
Well, I suppose some were tempted to come to that conclusion, confident they knew who and where the weeds were. But Matthew’s Gospel does something very interesting. It proclaims that God’s Kingdom is not only future but also present. And that means that the kingdom is present even when everything is all mixed up together, even when the wheat and weeds grow together. Maybe this isn’t how we think God should work. Maybe we think we would be a lot happier if God would do something right now about all the weeds in our midst.
I was thinking about this very question when I came upon an article in the Christian Century written by the cousin of Dep Middleton, who was the minister of Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, where on June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof shot and killed nine African Americans at a bible study. He entered as a stranger and was treated as a guest. Though he was white, and they were black, they did not attach stereotypes to him, but simply shared with him fellowship, prayer, worship and study. Dep, seated next to him, shared her bible, and she was apparently the first to be shot. We hardly know how to think about such evil, and certainly this passage from Matthew does not attempt to explain it. It simply says that this is the way the world is, and God’s kingdom, which is future but also present, is right in the midst of wheat and weeds growing together.
And there is something else to consider, which, I admit is a bit disturbing. The story gives us no clear criteria for judging between the wheat and the weeds. Only God truly knows what makes for goodness or for evil. Only God can judge. Of course, in this world and in our daily lives we must make all kinds of judgments; we have to make decisions about people, including their motivations and abilities. But these are always proximate decisions, never ultimate or final ones. Judging Dylann Roof guilty of murder does not mean he is unworthy of God’s grace. We judge as human beings and should never allow ourselves into believing that we see as God sees or know as God knows.
Kindness (Reflection Letter)
July 8, 2020
As many of you know, I lost a friend last Friday night. She had been a member of one of my former churches and later I became her conservator. Over the past ten years, we had become quite close. Though she had Covid-19, she was declared cured, but a few weeks later, she became septic and all her systems began to shut down. I had to make the hard decision with the help and support of a wonderful doctor to discontinue medical treatment. Anyway, after arriving home from the hospital with her two bags in my hand, I opened one up to find a t-shirt with these words on it, “Make America Kind Again.” I could not help but feel her last message to me concerned kindness, and given the fact that the staff at Hartford Hospital showed me incredible kindness as I sat with Judy, while all the machines and medication were turned off, the quality of kindness was certainly on my mind. When I left the hospital, I told the nurses how much I appreciated their kindness, shown to me as well as to Judy, who although comatose, was treated with great respect, tenderness and kindness.
And then on Sunday, my dear friend and colleague, Carolyn Young, whom many of you know, since she has preached here a number of times, preached a sermon on kindness. So, yes, kindness was definitely the message of the week.
Carolyn began her sermon with a story about the poet, Naomi Shihab Nye, an Arab-American, who wrote a poem called, Kindness. The poet had only been married a week, when on her honeymoon in India, her husband and she were robbed on a bus, where one of their fellow riders was murdered, his body cruelly deposited on the side of the road. Waiting for her husband to return with some money, she was suddenly inspired to write these words:
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
Indeed, kindness makes its most powerful imprint on us, when we have lost something or someone and suddenly without expecting it or even looking for it, we are found by someone, who reaches out in compassion and kindness. It is when you feel the loss and the emptiness that kindness rushes in to fill the lonely and forlorn space. Kindness is that quality which, when suddenly freely offered, feels like a gift that keeps on giving. As it says in the last line of the poem, kindness can go with us “everywhere, like a shadow or a friend.”
There are times when acts of kindness are ignored and even rejected. Sometimes people are in such an angry or even hateful place they cannot accept the gift. So full of something that threatens to consume them, they cannot make room for the kindness being offered. All we can do is offer; we cannot force anyone to accept.
As a minister I have seen relationships ripped apart, because someone could not move outside the circle of his or her anger long enough to see that something genuinely kind was being offered. Sometimes the past has this ugly power to take over the present and then the future, holding time itself in its thrall, refusing to give way to genuine kindness when it is offered.
I remember so well this woman whose 10 year old son was hit and killed by a car. It was not the driver’s fault; the boy, chasing a baseball, ran right in front of the car, and the driver, slamming on her breaks, could not stop the car before it made lethal contact. While many people offered help and support, the mother would accept nothing. She was too angry and too grief stricken to accept the various kindnesses being offered, and the anger endured for years. She became a prisoner of her anger, telling her minister that she had lived so long with her anger, she did not know how to let it go. She admitted she did not want to let it go, so familiar a companion it had become. She had indeed lost someone precious; she knew how desolate the landscape was. She knew the deep sorrow and the pain, and according to the poet that is the time when “only kindness can make sense anymore.” So, when a neighbor suddenly lost her 16 year old son in a car accident, this sorrowing, angry mother found herself reaching out in kindness to another hurting human being. And then she discovered her own sorrow strangely and warmly embraced by the kindness that has the capacity to bind sorrowing human beings together.
Never underestimate the power of kindness. It can change and heal the world.
July 8, 2020
As many of you know, I lost a friend last Friday night. She had been a member of one of my former churches and later I became her conservator. Over the past ten years, we had become quite close. Though she had Covid-19, she was declared cured, but a few weeks later, she became septic and all her systems began to shut down. I had to make the hard decision with the help and support of a wonderful doctor to discontinue medical treatment. Anyway, after arriving home from the hospital with her two bags in my hand, I opened one up to find a t-shirt with these words on it, “Make America Kind Again.” I could not help but feel her last message to me concerned kindness, and given the fact that the staff at Hartford Hospital showed me incredible kindness as I sat with Judy, while all the machines and medication were turned off, the quality of kindness was certainly on my mind. When I left the hospital, I told the nurses how much I appreciated their kindness, shown to me as well as to Judy, who although comatose, was treated with great respect, tenderness and kindness.
And then on Sunday, my dear friend and colleague, Carolyn Young, whom many of you know, since she has preached here a number of times, preached a sermon on kindness. So, yes, kindness was definitely the message of the week.
Carolyn began her sermon with a story about the poet, Naomi Shihab Nye, an Arab-American, who wrote a poem called, Kindness. The poet had only been married a week, when on her honeymoon in India, her husband and she were robbed on a bus, where one of their fellow riders was murdered, his body cruelly deposited on the side of the road. Waiting for her husband to return with some money, she was suddenly inspired to write these words:
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
Indeed, kindness makes its most powerful imprint on us, when we have lost something or someone and suddenly without expecting it or even looking for it, we are found by someone, who reaches out in compassion and kindness. It is when you feel the loss and the emptiness that kindness rushes in to fill the lonely and forlorn space. Kindness is that quality which, when suddenly freely offered, feels like a gift that keeps on giving. As it says in the last line of the poem, kindness can go with us “everywhere, like a shadow or a friend.”
There are times when acts of kindness are ignored and even rejected. Sometimes people are in such an angry or even hateful place they cannot accept the gift. So full of something that threatens to consume them, they cannot make room for the kindness being offered. All we can do is offer; we cannot force anyone to accept.
As a minister I have seen relationships ripped apart, because someone could not move outside the circle of his or her anger long enough to see that something genuinely kind was being offered. Sometimes the past has this ugly power to take over the present and then the future, holding time itself in its thrall, refusing to give way to genuine kindness when it is offered.
I remember so well this woman whose 10 year old son was hit and killed by a car. It was not the driver’s fault; the boy, chasing a baseball, ran right in front of the car, and the driver, slamming on her breaks, could not stop the car before it made lethal contact. While many people offered help and support, the mother would accept nothing. She was too angry and too grief stricken to accept the various kindnesses being offered, and the anger endured for years. She became a prisoner of her anger, telling her minister that she had lived so long with her anger, she did not know how to let it go. She admitted she did not want to let it go, so familiar a companion it had become. She had indeed lost someone precious; she knew how desolate the landscape was. She knew the deep sorrow and the pain, and according to the poet that is the time when “only kindness can make sense anymore.” So, when a neighbor suddenly lost her 16 year old son in a car accident, this sorrowing, angry mother found herself reaching out in kindness to another hurting human being. And then she discovered her own sorrow strangely and warmly embraced by the kindness that has the capacity to bind sorrowing human beings together.
Never underestimate the power of kindness. It can change and heal the world.
THE WASTEFUL SOWER by: Rev. Dr. Sandra L. Olsen 7/12/20
Her name was Alice, and all she wanted, she said, was a blue gown. Alice was around 80 years old, and for 40 years she had been a patient at the state mental hospital, where I worked. She had lived there so long in the days before effective medication, which no one really believed she could make it in the outside world, even with the best community support. And so, like many others, there she stayed and lived, or as some would say, existed, waiting to die. While many patients showed no interest in anything except the cigarettes they could smoke three times a day, Alice had a passion---a blue gown. That’s the only subject she would ever talk about, describing details of this blue chiffon dress with dark blue forget me not flowers, scattered all over it. “That’s all I want,” she would say, and then she would describe the gown again and again and again. There were plenty of times I tried to avoid Alice, because I simply could not bear to hear about the gown one more time, but sometimes I could not escape. If she saw me, she would gently take my hand and lead me into her room and show me a chair, where she expected me to sit. And then she would begin to talk about the blue gown.
“What’s this about a blue gown?” I asked the Roman Catholic priest, Father Dan, who had been there for 18 years. “As long as I can remember, Alice has talked about that gown,” he said. “Maybe it is something she wore when she was young.”
I was very fond of Father Dan. He had this infectious laugh and a twinkle in his eyes to match. I admired him for his ability to accept everyone as a child of God. He was a kind and patient man, far more patient than I, since I had seen him many times talk with Alice, and when she would go on and on about her blue gown, he would tell her how lovely the gown would look on her and how the color would perfectly match her beautiful blue eyes.
Father Dan, I suspected, was a bit of a renegade. He would not talk much about his life as a priest, but we all knew that most of the time, the priests who ended up assigned to a mental hospital had either done something displeasing to the hierarchy, or were simply too old or too weak to work in a parish. The so called “best and brightest” were never given such assignments. Yet it was obvious to anyone who bothered to talk with Father Dan that he was among the elite with a PhD from Notre Dame and the ability to play classical piano and read and speak fluently four different languages. So, he must have done something, I concluded. Why else would he be here?
I asked him how he came to work in the hospital, but all he would say was they couldn’t find anyone else. “Most priests would dread this sort of assignment, he said, “but I love it.” And indeed, he did. He loved the patients and he also loved the staff, and everyone in turn loved Father Dan. I had only been working at the hospital for a few months, when he approached me and said, “Why don’t you join me for the service today. I am celebrating the Eucharist, and I would love to have you help.” I was shocked; I mean Protestants were not welcome at the table. But there I was, not only assisting him, but also saying the words of institution as well as the prayer of consecration. When I acted surprised, he simply said. “This is Christ’s table, not Rome’s. Well, he was right, I thought. And this, I concluded, was what must have gotten him into trouble with his bishop. He did not follow the rules.
One Wednesday afternoon Father Dan was presiding over communion, and the text for the day was the parable of the sower from Matthew. He began by talking about parables, how Jesus taught using these stories that made people think and see in a new way. But not everyone sees, he said, and not everyone wants to understand, he continued. Some people just prefer to close their eyes and see everything with their own little minds. It’s hard, he continued, to let yourself be open to a new way, and Jesus knew and knows how hard it is. He knew that many people cannot do it or will not do it. They will listen, but never understand; they will look, but never perceive.
Now as his sermon went on, it was quite obvious that Father Dan was preaching beyond the capacity of the patients. I mean most of them hardly spoke; most of them had this blank, institutionalized stare. Now people of all faiths or even no faith would come to Father Dan’s services simply because it was something to do, and so it was quite a mix of people--- Protestants, Catholics and even Jewish patients who would gather for the service. And also, staff would come, and on this particular day there was another priest sitting in the back of the chapel.
Father Dan pointed out in his sermon that the sower who went out to plant his seeds did no preparatory work. “If you are going to plant so you can have a good harvest,” Father Dan said, you have to prepare. He told us how he had grown up on a farm. “And let me tell you,” he said, “farmers don’t just go out and carelessly scatter their seed the way this inept farmer did. No, they don’t. They first remove rocks and weeds. They plow the soil into neat and straight furrows. And then ever so carefully they put the seed in the furrows and cover it up, spacing them about eight inches apart. “So,” he asked, “is it any wonder that this harvest was not exactly a stellar one. After all, most of the seed was wasted, thrown by the roadside, where birds would eat it, or thrown into a clump of weeds, where it was choked. Only some of this seed came to harvest---maybe only 10%, maybe even less. And yet Jesus thinks this is a good harvest! Not in the world I grew up in; not even in the world we live in now. But in God’s world, there is no such thing as waste. God throws the seed everywhere. There’s no place unworthy of seed, no place where God’s word cannot be spread. Maybe it won’t grow, but who really knows, who really can tell, why or how or when the seed will take root and blossom.”
Come now, he said, for all things are ready. This is Christ’s table, the table where the bread and wine are God’s gifts to all God’s people. And so, all God’s people came forward, a cast of sundry characters, each with her own story, each with his own pain, and they received---including Jonah, the old Jewish man, wearing a yarmulke on top of his head. Now this would bother none of us here; we celebrate an open table, where all are invited. But Father Dan was a Roman Catholic, and this is simply not the way of Rome.
Well, in less than a month’s time, Father Dan was gone. We did not know the details, but he had been visited a number of times by a priest, whom we suspected had reported that Father Dan crossed lines no priest is supposed to cross. Then some months later a package arrived at the hospital, addressed to Alice, and when the staff opened it up, there it was, the most beautiful blue gown you could imagine, scattered with forget-me-nots. And yes, the blue did match Alice’s blue eyes, which even decades of illness had not dimmed. And in the box, along with the gown was the score to the song---Alice Blue Gown. Of course, my grandmother used to sing it when I was a little girl, but I had failed to make the connection. “Til it wilted, I wore it; I’ll always adore it, my sweet little Alice blue gown!” There was no note or card, but we all knew it was Father Dan who had the gown sewn. And when Alice saw it, she hugged the dress and cried, and when she died a year later, she was buried in her beautiful Alice blue gown.
Seeds get scattered everywhere, and some of those seeds look to us as if they are wasted, but it is not for us to decide on the waste. Only God can judge that, and so we as Christians, we as the church should sometimes dare to scatter with abandon, like the wasteful sower in our story. There are so many people, who would never have taken the time to pay attention to Alice, never would have thought to have a gown sewn for this afflicted, yet grace filled woman? We never know if, how, when or where the seeds we scatter will take root and blossom. But when they do, what a surprise, what a mystery, what grace!
Now play Alice Blue Gown
Her name was Alice, and all she wanted, she said, was a blue gown. Alice was around 80 years old, and for 40 years she had been a patient at the state mental hospital, where I worked. She had lived there so long in the days before effective medication, which no one really believed she could make it in the outside world, even with the best community support. And so, like many others, there she stayed and lived, or as some would say, existed, waiting to die. While many patients showed no interest in anything except the cigarettes they could smoke three times a day, Alice had a passion---a blue gown. That’s the only subject she would ever talk about, describing details of this blue chiffon dress with dark blue forget me not flowers, scattered all over it. “That’s all I want,” she would say, and then she would describe the gown again and again and again. There were plenty of times I tried to avoid Alice, because I simply could not bear to hear about the gown one more time, but sometimes I could not escape. If she saw me, she would gently take my hand and lead me into her room and show me a chair, where she expected me to sit. And then she would begin to talk about the blue gown.
“What’s this about a blue gown?” I asked the Roman Catholic priest, Father Dan, who had been there for 18 years. “As long as I can remember, Alice has talked about that gown,” he said. “Maybe it is something she wore when she was young.”
I was very fond of Father Dan. He had this infectious laugh and a twinkle in his eyes to match. I admired him for his ability to accept everyone as a child of God. He was a kind and patient man, far more patient than I, since I had seen him many times talk with Alice, and when she would go on and on about her blue gown, he would tell her how lovely the gown would look on her and how the color would perfectly match her beautiful blue eyes.
Father Dan, I suspected, was a bit of a renegade. He would not talk much about his life as a priest, but we all knew that most of the time, the priests who ended up assigned to a mental hospital had either done something displeasing to the hierarchy, or were simply too old or too weak to work in a parish. The so called “best and brightest” were never given such assignments. Yet it was obvious to anyone who bothered to talk with Father Dan that he was among the elite with a PhD from Notre Dame and the ability to play classical piano and read and speak fluently four different languages. So, he must have done something, I concluded. Why else would he be here?
I asked him how he came to work in the hospital, but all he would say was they couldn’t find anyone else. “Most priests would dread this sort of assignment, he said, “but I love it.” And indeed, he did. He loved the patients and he also loved the staff, and everyone in turn loved Father Dan. I had only been working at the hospital for a few months, when he approached me and said, “Why don’t you join me for the service today. I am celebrating the Eucharist, and I would love to have you help.” I was shocked; I mean Protestants were not welcome at the table. But there I was, not only assisting him, but also saying the words of institution as well as the prayer of consecration. When I acted surprised, he simply said. “This is Christ’s table, not Rome’s. Well, he was right, I thought. And this, I concluded, was what must have gotten him into trouble with his bishop. He did not follow the rules.
One Wednesday afternoon Father Dan was presiding over communion, and the text for the day was the parable of the sower from Matthew. He began by talking about parables, how Jesus taught using these stories that made people think and see in a new way. But not everyone sees, he said, and not everyone wants to understand, he continued. Some people just prefer to close their eyes and see everything with their own little minds. It’s hard, he continued, to let yourself be open to a new way, and Jesus knew and knows how hard it is. He knew that many people cannot do it or will not do it. They will listen, but never understand; they will look, but never perceive.
Now as his sermon went on, it was quite obvious that Father Dan was preaching beyond the capacity of the patients. I mean most of them hardly spoke; most of them had this blank, institutionalized stare. Now people of all faiths or even no faith would come to Father Dan’s services simply because it was something to do, and so it was quite a mix of people--- Protestants, Catholics and even Jewish patients who would gather for the service. And also, staff would come, and on this particular day there was another priest sitting in the back of the chapel.
Father Dan pointed out in his sermon that the sower who went out to plant his seeds did no preparatory work. “If you are going to plant so you can have a good harvest,” Father Dan said, you have to prepare. He told us how he had grown up on a farm. “And let me tell you,” he said, “farmers don’t just go out and carelessly scatter their seed the way this inept farmer did. No, they don’t. They first remove rocks and weeds. They plow the soil into neat and straight furrows. And then ever so carefully they put the seed in the furrows and cover it up, spacing them about eight inches apart. “So,” he asked, “is it any wonder that this harvest was not exactly a stellar one. After all, most of the seed was wasted, thrown by the roadside, where birds would eat it, or thrown into a clump of weeds, where it was choked. Only some of this seed came to harvest---maybe only 10%, maybe even less. And yet Jesus thinks this is a good harvest! Not in the world I grew up in; not even in the world we live in now. But in God’s world, there is no such thing as waste. God throws the seed everywhere. There’s no place unworthy of seed, no place where God’s word cannot be spread. Maybe it won’t grow, but who really knows, who really can tell, why or how or when the seed will take root and blossom.”
Come now, he said, for all things are ready. This is Christ’s table, the table where the bread and wine are God’s gifts to all God’s people. And so, all God’s people came forward, a cast of sundry characters, each with her own story, each with his own pain, and they received---including Jonah, the old Jewish man, wearing a yarmulke on top of his head. Now this would bother none of us here; we celebrate an open table, where all are invited. But Father Dan was a Roman Catholic, and this is simply not the way of Rome.
Well, in less than a month’s time, Father Dan was gone. We did not know the details, but he had been visited a number of times by a priest, whom we suspected had reported that Father Dan crossed lines no priest is supposed to cross. Then some months later a package arrived at the hospital, addressed to Alice, and when the staff opened it up, there it was, the most beautiful blue gown you could imagine, scattered with forget-me-nots. And yes, the blue did match Alice’s blue eyes, which even decades of illness had not dimmed. And in the box, along with the gown was the score to the song---Alice Blue Gown. Of course, my grandmother used to sing it when I was a little girl, but I had failed to make the connection. “Til it wilted, I wore it; I’ll always adore it, my sweet little Alice blue gown!” There was no note or card, but we all knew it was Father Dan who had the gown sewn. And when Alice saw it, she hugged the dress and cried, and when she died a year later, she was buried in her beautiful Alice blue gown.
Seeds get scattered everywhere, and some of those seeds look to us as if they are wasted, but it is not for us to decide on the waste. Only God can judge that, and so we as Christians, we as the church should sometimes dare to scatter with abandon, like the wasteful sower in our story. There are so many people, who would never have taken the time to pay attention to Alice, never would have thought to have a gown sewn for this afflicted, yet grace filled woman? We never know if, how, when or where the seeds we scatter will take root and blossom. But when they do, what a surprise, what a mystery, what grace!
Now play Alice Blue Gown
July 2, 2020, (Acceptance of Suffering Weekly Reflection)
Dear Friends,
This week the news has not been good, at least concerning the virus. Though our state has been doing quite well, we are seeing the virus rage across the South, Southwest as well as California. One of my sons has a colleague in Florida, who wanted to know if most people in Connecticut were wearing masks. “Yes,” Ashley replied. “We wear them in stores, offices, any place, where other people are gathered.” “Wow!” His friend was shocked. “Hardly anyone is wearing them here,” he intoned. So, is it any surprise that in certain parts of the country the virus is spreading? But as Dr. Fauci reminded us this week, no part of the country is safe as long as some parts are experiencing exponential growth. We are indeed part of a larger whole and though our federal system allows states to make their own rules and regulations, our state borders are porous to people as well as to germs.
With this reality in mind I recall something I read in the New York Times Arts section in mid-June. It is hardly something I would have expected to find there. The article was named: Bad Things Happen: Accepting It is Good. The gist of the article was that although we should not surrender to pessimism, it is important to make room for suffering. And we have certainly seen a great deal of it lately. Not only is the virus holding us captive, but also, we have seen the ugly blatancy of racism and the death it spews out, not to mention the economic catastrophe that has cost Americans 40 million jobs, the greatest loss since the Great Depression. We are facing tremendous challenges, and those challenges are resulting in terrible suffering for many people.
Accepting that “bad things happen” does not mean there is no room for protest and fight. Of course, we are called to use our resources to help those in need as we also take a very hard look at some of the systemic injustices in our society, which has meant that the load of suffering is unevenly distributed. Not only do Black and Brown people suffer more at the hands of law enforcement than do White people, but also the virus has afflicted and killed them in greater numbers. This is the reality we all need to face.
But there is something else that needs facing. Too many people---especially people of privilege---seem to think they should be immune to suffering. Though we can certainly make a strong case that a poor national response has led to greater suffering and death than needed to be, yet even a robust response would not have completely knocked the virus out. We still would have to confront the raw fact that we cannot control as much as we want to control. Because we have seen so much medical progress in our era, we seem to think we should be able to solve any problem we are called to face. A vaccine against the virus is very likely, but there is no vaccine against all suffering.
The New York Times article quoted a philosophy professor, Agnes Callard, at the University of Chicago, who referred to the 19th century German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, who turned ethical thought around when he put at its center pain and suffering rather than pleasure and well being. While Schopenhauer is known for his pessimism, one of those people who sees the glass as half empty rather than half full, he nevertheless reminds us of an important truth: life is indeed punctuated by joy and sorrow, defeat and victory, randomness as well as planned intention. And we are not guaranteed that the distribution will be equitable or even comprehensible! While we can and should work for greater justice in the distribution of suffering, this does not mean we can correct for all suffering. And accepting that reality is a form of wisdom. The Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes basically embraced this perspective as did the Buddha, who taught suffering was the basic condition of life.
Professor Callard also said that some forms of suffering should be embraced, and she puts love in that category. “Part of what makes human life good is loving things that can be taken away from us,” she said. “You can live a smaller, more solitary life that has less pain in it. But there isn’t a way to fully love someone and care about them while shielding yourself from the pain of their loss.”
We can live as if pain is always an insult to pleasure and darkness a refutation of the light, but there is another way to understand and even appreciate the contrast. We can see these contrasts as giving to life its depth and meaning. When we look at a great painting by Vermeer or Rembrandt or the Impressionists, whom so many adore for the brightness of the colors, it is the play of light and dark, the appearance of shadows that allows the beauty of the painting to be seen. Perhaps life is not so different. After all, Jesus never said we would know no suffering and death, though he promised they would not be the final word. Love is.
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
Dear Friends,
This week the news has not been good, at least concerning the virus. Though our state has been doing quite well, we are seeing the virus rage across the South, Southwest as well as California. One of my sons has a colleague in Florida, who wanted to know if most people in Connecticut were wearing masks. “Yes,” Ashley replied. “We wear them in stores, offices, any place, where other people are gathered.” “Wow!” His friend was shocked. “Hardly anyone is wearing them here,” he intoned. So, is it any surprise that in certain parts of the country the virus is spreading? But as Dr. Fauci reminded us this week, no part of the country is safe as long as some parts are experiencing exponential growth. We are indeed part of a larger whole and though our federal system allows states to make their own rules and regulations, our state borders are porous to people as well as to germs.
With this reality in mind I recall something I read in the New York Times Arts section in mid-June. It is hardly something I would have expected to find there. The article was named: Bad Things Happen: Accepting It is Good. The gist of the article was that although we should not surrender to pessimism, it is important to make room for suffering. And we have certainly seen a great deal of it lately. Not only is the virus holding us captive, but also, we have seen the ugly blatancy of racism and the death it spews out, not to mention the economic catastrophe that has cost Americans 40 million jobs, the greatest loss since the Great Depression. We are facing tremendous challenges, and those challenges are resulting in terrible suffering for many people.
Accepting that “bad things happen” does not mean there is no room for protest and fight. Of course, we are called to use our resources to help those in need as we also take a very hard look at some of the systemic injustices in our society, which has meant that the load of suffering is unevenly distributed. Not only do Black and Brown people suffer more at the hands of law enforcement than do White people, but also the virus has afflicted and killed them in greater numbers. This is the reality we all need to face.
But there is something else that needs facing. Too many people---especially people of privilege---seem to think they should be immune to suffering. Though we can certainly make a strong case that a poor national response has led to greater suffering and death than needed to be, yet even a robust response would not have completely knocked the virus out. We still would have to confront the raw fact that we cannot control as much as we want to control. Because we have seen so much medical progress in our era, we seem to think we should be able to solve any problem we are called to face. A vaccine against the virus is very likely, but there is no vaccine against all suffering.
The New York Times article quoted a philosophy professor, Agnes Callard, at the University of Chicago, who referred to the 19th century German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, who turned ethical thought around when he put at its center pain and suffering rather than pleasure and well being. While Schopenhauer is known for his pessimism, one of those people who sees the glass as half empty rather than half full, he nevertheless reminds us of an important truth: life is indeed punctuated by joy and sorrow, defeat and victory, randomness as well as planned intention. And we are not guaranteed that the distribution will be equitable or even comprehensible! While we can and should work for greater justice in the distribution of suffering, this does not mean we can correct for all suffering. And accepting that reality is a form of wisdom. The Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes basically embraced this perspective as did the Buddha, who taught suffering was the basic condition of life.
Professor Callard also said that some forms of suffering should be embraced, and she puts love in that category. “Part of what makes human life good is loving things that can be taken away from us,” she said. “You can live a smaller, more solitary life that has less pain in it. But there isn’t a way to fully love someone and care about them while shielding yourself from the pain of their loss.”
We can live as if pain is always an insult to pleasure and darkness a refutation of the light, but there is another way to understand and even appreciate the contrast. We can see these contrasts as giving to life its depth and meaning. When we look at a great painting by Vermeer or Rembrandt or the Impressionists, whom so many adore for the brightness of the colors, it is the play of light and dark, the appearance of shadows that allows the beauty of the painting to be seen. Perhaps life is not so different. After all, Jesus never said we would know no suffering and death, though he promised they would not be the final word. Love is.
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
THE BURDENS WE CARRY by: The Rev. Dr. Sandra L. Olsen 7/5/2020
Matthew 11: 16-19; 25-30
Kenny was a gifted nurse, who worked in a hospital burn unit. He was not only technically skillful, but he was also funny, helping both staff and patients to laugh. And in a place like a burn unit, laughter can be life saving. As talented as Kenny was, however, he did not believe nursing was his call. He really wanted to be a New York City fire fighter. He loved the adrenal rush that came for him in the battle against time and death, both in the emergency room of the burn unit, and he hoped in a burning New York City skyscraper. He had applied to the NYC Fire Department twice before but had been turned down. On his third try, he made it!
At his farewell party people said a lot of wonderful things about Kenny, but the most surprising words came from one of the plastic surgeons, who had worked closely with Kenny and admired him greatly. This surgeon was said to have the hands and fingers of an angel, so deftly did he sew new skin on burned bodies. While the doctor praised Kenny’s skill, what he really spoke about was following one’s call. And that is why he envied Kenny. He startled the entire staff when he confessed that medicine had never been his call; he was a violinist, a graduate of Julliard, but he just did not have the fortitude or maybe even the talent to make it as a concert violinist. And so, he decided to go to medical school and become a plastic surgeon. “I envy you, Kenny,” he said, “because you are among the blessed, able to follow your call.” Ten years later at Kenny’s memorial service, held after his death on September 11th 2001 at the World Trade Center, the surgeon again spoke, and again mentioned call. “I still envy Kenny,” he said. “He followed his call, even to the end.”
The burdens people carry. Here this talented doctor, admired and respected by colleagues and patients alike carried the burden of not following his call. Perhaps some might accuse him of ingratitude or self-obsession, but, as his minister said, “There was no denying his profound unhappiness. His sufferings were real, and real suffering demands honest respect.”
The burdens people carry: illness, loss of job and home, financial insecurity, broken relationships and yes, even the inability to follow what one believes is one’s call. Life is filled with such problems, and sometimes these problems feel like burdens too heavy to carry. Is it any wonder then that these words from Matthew are among the most favored in the New Testament: Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
In this 11th chapter Jesus is not speaking about all burdens; he is referring specifically to religious burdens, put on the people by a religious establishment that demanded conformity to certain rules. This would include things like ritual purity, financial obligations to the Temple, obligatory sacrifices, etc. Jesus was critical of the scribes and priests, who controlled Temple life, but he was also critical of the Pharisees, who though more temperate, because they allowed both written and oral interpretation of the law, were still demanding about conformity to ritual practice---hand washing, avoiding people who were considered ritually unclean like Samaritans and tax collectors.
“You find fault with everything,” Jesus is essentially saying to these religious leaders. “John the Baptist was an ascetic, and you accused him of having a demon. I eat and drink, and you accuse me of being a drunkard and a glutton. You are not satisfied with anything—except your own narrow way. Don’t you understand? This is not what religion and faith are all about. It is not about all these religious duties. You can follow them or not follow them, but whatever you do, understand that they are not at the core of faithfulness. They don’t move you any closer to God. This is the wisdom that even infants can know, but sometimes such wisdom is hidden from the learned and the wise.”
Jesus never meant that closeness to God would remove all burdens. After all, Jesus certainly had his burdens to carry. In this chapter alone he has problems with religious authorities that are gunning for him. But while many of us struggle to find God, or experience God’s active presence in our lives, Jesus did not struggle to be in relationship with God. Even in his abandonment on the cross, his cry was still, “My God.” His intimacy with God is a kind of yoking. To be yoked is to be attached. Oxen are yoked together to pull a heavy burden. So, to follow this metaphor, to be yoked to Jesus is to be attached to one who is intimate with God, so intimate, in fact, that he shows us the human face of God. And when we see that face, when we see what God is like, our burdens and problems can look differently. Yes, we still carry them, but they are lighter, because God also carries them. In Jesus Christ our burdens and sufferings are taken up into the heart of God, and God is with us in our sufferings.
The sacrament of communion is all about an intimacy with God through Jesus Christ, who suffered, died, was resurrected and ascended into God, which means that the fullness of Christ’s humanity, including his suffering and death, was taken into God. So, when you take the bread and juice or wine this morning, symbols of Christ’s body and blood, remember that he too bore burdens. Jesus never promised to remove from us all burdens, as God did not remove them from him, but Christ did promise that the load is lightened when we yoke our lives to him, and let him show us the way to be fully human, fully alive to God’s power in our lives.
Yes, we all carry burdens, and some of them are indeed heavy, hard to carry. Not long after Kenny’s death, the surgeon began bringing his violin to the hospital, and sometimes before surgery to calm a frightened patient, or sometimes after surgery, to help alleviate the pain, he would go around the burn unit and play for the patients. He thought he was doing it to help others, and he was, but his playing also helped him. In a strange sort of way, for the doctor Kenny’s death was redemptive, helping him to see his call in a new way. Such is the healing grace of God, working in our lives to lighten the load, even when we least expect it.
Matthew 11: 16-19; 25-30
Kenny was a gifted nurse, who worked in a hospital burn unit. He was not only technically skillful, but he was also funny, helping both staff and patients to laugh. And in a place like a burn unit, laughter can be life saving. As talented as Kenny was, however, he did not believe nursing was his call. He really wanted to be a New York City fire fighter. He loved the adrenal rush that came for him in the battle against time and death, both in the emergency room of the burn unit, and he hoped in a burning New York City skyscraper. He had applied to the NYC Fire Department twice before but had been turned down. On his third try, he made it!
At his farewell party people said a lot of wonderful things about Kenny, but the most surprising words came from one of the plastic surgeons, who had worked closely with Kenny and admired him greatly. This surgeon was said to have the hands and fingers of an angel, so deftly did he sew new skin on burned bodies. While the doctor praised Kenny’s skill, what he really spoke about was following one’s call. And that is why he envied Kenny. He startled the entire staff when he confessed that medicine had never been his call; he was a violinist, a graduate of Julliard, but he just did not have the fortitude or maybe even the talent to make it as a concert violinist. And so, he decided to go to medical school and become a plastic surgeon. “I envy you, Kenny,” he said, “because you are among the blessed, able to follow your call.” Ten years later at Kenny’s memorial service, held after his death on September 11th 2001 at the World Trade Center, the surgeon again spoke, and again mentioned call. “I still envy Kenny,” he said. “He followed his call, even to the end.”
The burdens people carry. Here this talented doctor, admired and respected by colleagues and patients alike carried the burden of not following his call. Perhaps some might accuse him of ingratitude or self-obsession, but, as his minister said, “There was no denying his profound unhappiness. His sufferings were real, and real suffering demands honest respect.”
The burdens people carry: illness, loss of job and home, financial insecurity, broken relationships and yes, even the inability to follow what one believes is one’s call. Life is filled with such problems, and sometimes these problems feel like burdens too heavy to carry. Is it any wonder then that these words from Matthew are among the most favored in the New Testament: Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
In this 11th chapter Jesus is not speaking about all burdens; he is referring specifically to religious burdens, put on the people by a religious establishment that demanded conformity to certain rules. This would include things like ritual purity, financial obligations to the Temple, obligatory sacrifices, etc. Jesus was critical of the scribes and priests, who controlled Temple life, but he was also critical of the Pharisees, who though more temperate, because they allowed both written and oral interpretation of the law, were still demanding about conformity to ritual practice---hand washing, avoiding people who were considered ritually unclean like Samaritans and tax collectors.
“You find fault with everything,” Jesus is essentially saying to these religious leaders. “John the Baptist was an ascetic, and you accused him of having a demon. I eat and drink, and you accuse me of being a drunkard and a glutton. You are not satisfied with anything—except your own narrow way. Don’t you understand? This is not what religion and faith are all about. It is not about all these religious duties. You can follow them or not follow them, but whatever you do, understand that they are not at the core of faithfulness. They don’t move you any closer to God. This is the wisdom that even infants can know, but sometimes such wisdom is hidden from the learned and the wise.”
Jesus never meant that closeness to God would remove all burdens. After all, Jesus certainly had his burdens to carry. In this chapter alone he has problems with religious authorities that are gunning for him. But while many of us struggle to find God, or experience God’s active presence in our lives, Jesus did not struggle to be in relationship with God. Even in his abandonment on the cross, his cry was still, “My God.” His intimacy with God is a kind of yoking. To be yoked is to be attached. Oxen are yoked together to pull a heavy burden. So, to follow this metaphor, to be yoked to Jesus is to be attached to one who is intimate with God, so intimate, in fact, that he shows us the human face of God. And when we see that face, when we see what God is like, our burdens and problems can look differently. Yes, we still carry them, but they are lighter, because God also carries them. In Jesus Christ our burdens and sufferings are taken up into the heart of God, and God is with us in our sufferings.
The sacrament of communion is all about an intimacy with God through Jesus Christ, who suffered, died, was resurrected and ascended into God, which means that the fullness of Christ’s humanity, including his suffering and death, was taken into God. So, when you take the bread and juice or wine this morning, symbols of Christ’s body and blood, remember that he too bore burdens. Jesus never promised to remove from us all burdens, as God did not remove them from him, but Christ did promise that the load is lightened when we yoke our lives to him, and let him show us the way to be fully human, fully alive to God’s power in our lives.
Yes, we all carry burdens, and some of them are indeed heavy, hard to carry. Not long after Kenny’s death, the surgeon began bringing his violin to the hospital, and sometimes before surgery to calm a frightened patient, or sometimes after surgery, to help alleviate the pain, he would go around the burn unit and play for the patients. He thought he was doing it to help others, and he was, but his playing also helped him. In a strange sort of way, for the doctor Kenny’s death was redemptive, helping him to see his call in a new way. Such is the healing grace of God, working in our lives to lighten the load, even when we least expect it.
June 24, 2020
Dear Friends,
I have this little book, Be Happy, 170 Ways to Transform Your Day. It is not a book of essays, but a series of short quips, followed by a few sentences of interpretation, designed to get you thinking. Some of the quips are: Follow Your Heart, Accentuate the Positive; Stop Underestimating Yourself, Change Directions, Find Freedom, Be Yourself. I liked all of them, but there were two, which really grabbed my attention: Put the Past Behind You and Confront Your Fears.
About putting the past behind you, Patrick Lindsay, the author of the book, wrote, “You can’t change it, so don’t wear it like a chain. Understand it. Learn from it. Turn the experience into a positive. Use it to look ahead.” Over the years of my ministry, including five years spent in hospital chaplaincy, I have certainly heard and seen people who cannot put the past behind them. Indeed, some do wear it like chain. Why do we do this? Though it is usually not a healthy, too many times we cling to the hurts and pains of the past, revisiting them over and over again, like a long playing record that goes on and on and on.
But it is not only the negative past people cling to. Sometimes people have a sprint of brilliance at the beginning and are tempted to think that is all there is to their lives. I remember this very talented violinist I met in the hospital, who had won a prestigious musical award at the age of 21. And then he just stopped playing. “I had nowhere to go after that achievement,” he said. “I felt that everyone would be looking at me for more and more and more. And I did not want the pressure, so I just put my violin down and have never played again. That was it for me.” I don’t think I would have thought it was such an awful decision if he had felt at peace with it. But he wasn’t. He told me he had surrendered his talent, because he could not take the pressure, and from his point of view, winning that one contest was the only thing that really counted in his life. I think he neither understood his past nor learned from it. The culmination of his story was his dying mother’s request that he play his violin at her memorial service. But no, he could not even do that. Sadly, he wore his past like a chain around his neck.
And what about confronting our fears? Let’s face it, Jesus spent a great deal of his time telling people not to be afraid, precisely because he knew people are very afraid. We all are afraid, and I don’t think telling people to put away their fears does much good. But I will give Jesus credit for intending more than a command. I think he really did mean confront your fears. In the book, Be Happy, the author writes: “Confront your fears is so easy to say, but difficult to do. But until you face your fears, you’re always looking back. You’re a diminished version of yourself. Do it by degrees. Do it with the help of others but stare down your fears. Watch yourself grow as the fears shrink.”
Again, I have learned from the people to whom I have ministered along the way. I remember Jessica, who seemed absolutely fearless. She had been an emergency room nurse at a big city hospital in Boston, and then she worked with an international agency in the occupied territories of the West Bank, giving medical help to people who often lacked it. You can imagine the drama of some of her stories, especially in the West Bank, where there were times her life was literally on the line. And so, I asked her if she were ever afraid. At first, she did not seem to want to answer, and then she finally said, “All fear in me is gone, because I have already suffered the worst fear that anyone could ever have.” Her entire family, a husband and two young children, were killed in a head on collision. “You fear,” she said, losing people you love. That has already happened to me, so I have nothing left to fear.”
Over the years I have thought about Jessica many times. When we speak of confronting our fears, we usually mean to say there is a choice. We face our fears, or we do not. But Jessica had no choice, at least initially. Her worst fear suddenly came crashing into her life. And she had to face it or die. So, she faced her grief head on, and in facing her grief, she also faced her fear. In the end, she said, she finally felt liberated from fear. She could not make up her mind if that was a good thing. “It is not normal to live without fear,” she insisted, “but it does give me a freedom I never would have chosen, yet it has chosen me, and so I live the best way I know how.”
Love does make us vulnerable, and vulnerability can make us afraid. Jessica was only 34 when she suffered that terrible loss, and I think she was determined to never be vulnerable again. Ten years later, however, she married a man, who had lost his wife to breast cancer, leaving him with three children to raise, ages 10, 12 and 15. Once again she was vulnerable, and once again she knew fear, but she had already confronted it once, and indeed, her life had grown, even as she once again embraced the fear that comes from loving people whom we realize we might lose.
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
Dear Friends,
I have this little book, Be Happy, 170 Ways to Transform Your Day. It is not a book of essays, but a series of short quips, followed by a few sentences of interpretation, designed to get you thinking. Some of the quips are: Follow Your Heart, Accentuate the Positive; Stop Underestimating Yourself, Change Directions, Find Freedom, Be Yourself. I liked all of them, but there were two, which really grabbed my attention: Put the Past Behind You and Confront Your Fears.
About putting the past behind you, Patrick Lindsay, the author of the book, wrote, “You can’t change it, so don’t wear it like a chain. Understand it. Learn from it. Turn the experience into a positive. Use it to look ahead.” Over the years of my ministry, including five years spent in hospital chaplaincy, I have certainly heard and seen people who cannot put the past behind them. Indeed, some do wear it like chain. Why do we do this? Though it is usually not a healthy, too many times we cling to the hurts and pains of the past, revisiting them over and over again, like a long playing record that goes on and on and on.
But it is not only the negative past people cling to. Sometimes people have a sprint of brilliance at the beginning and are tempted to think that is all there is to their lives. I remember this very talented violinist I met in the hospital, who had won a prestigious musical award at the age of 21. And then he just stopped playing. “I had nowhere to go after that achievement,” he said. “I felt that everyone would be looking at me for more and more and more. And I did not want the pressure, so I just put my violin down and have never played again. That was it for me.” I don’t think I would have thought it was such an awful decision if he had felt at peace with it. But he wasn’t. He told me he had surrendered his talent, because he could not take the pressure, and from his point of view, winning that one contest was the only thing that really counted in his life. I think he neither understood his past nor learned from it. The culmination of his story was his dying mother’s request that he play his violin at her memorial service. But no, he could not even do that. Sadly, he wore his past like a chain around his neck.
And what about confronting our fears? Let’s face it, Jesus spent a great deal of his time telling people not to be afraid, precisely because he knew people are very afraid. We all are afraid, and I don’t think telling people to put away their fears does much good. But I will give Jesus credit for intending more than a command. I think he really did mean confront your fears. In the book, Be Happy, the author writes: “Confront your fears is so easy to say, but difficult to do. But until you face your fears, you’re always looking back. You’re a diminished version of yourself. Do it by degrees. Do it with the help of others but stare down your fears. Watch yourself grow as the fears shrink.”
Again, I have learned from the people to whom I have ministered along the way. I remember Jessica, who seemed absolutely fearless. She had been an emergency room nurse at a big city hospital in Boston, and then she worked with an international agency in the occupied territories of the West Bank, giving medical help to people who often lacked it. You can imagine the drama of some of her stories, especially in the West Bank, where there were times her life was literally on the line. And so, I asked her if she were ever afraid. At first, she did not seem to want to answer, and then she finally said, “All fear in me is gone, because I have already suffered the worst fear that anyone could ever have.” Her entire family, a husband and two young children, were killed in a head on collision. “You fear,” she said, losing people you love. That has already happened to me, so I have nothing left to fear.”
Over the years I have thought about Jessica many times. When we speak of confronting our fears, we usually mean to say there is a choice. We face our fears, or we do not. But Jessica had no choice, at least initially. Her worst fear suddenly came crashing into her life. And she had to face it or die. So, she faced her grief head on, and in facing her grief, she also faced her fear. In the end, she said, she finally felt liberated from fear. She could not make up her mind if that was a good thing. “It is not normal to live without fear,” she insisted, “but it does give me a freedom I never would have chosen, yet it has chosen me, and so I live the best way I know how.”
Love does make us vulnerable, and vulnerability can make us afraid. Jessica was only 34 when she suffered that terrible loss, and I think she was determined to never be vulnerable again. Ten years later, however, she married a man, who had lost his wife to breast cancer, leaving him with three children to raise, ages 10, 12 and 15. Once again she was vulnerable, and once again she knew fear, but she had already confronted it once, and indeed, her life had grown, even as she once again embraced the fear that comes from loving people whom we realize we might lose.
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
GOD WILL PROVIDE OR GOD WILL SEE by Rev. Sandra L. Olsen 6/28/20
Genesis 22: 1-14
There is probably no more troubling text in all of scripture than the story of God’s command to Abraham that he offer his son Isaac as a burnt offering to God. Alice Miller, a famous German psychiatrist, used this story as a searing critique of abusive child rearing practices. God, she said, is here portrayed as the ultimate child abuser, and this is hardly the role model we want or need. Feminist biblical interpretation has also followed that line of thought, extending it to Jesus, who has been understood as the sacrifice for human sin. Such a God, the feminists contend, would not be worthy of our devotion, trust and love.
So yes, this story is troubling, because even if God had no intention of accepting the sacrifice, Abraham did not know that. And think of poor terrified Isaac, bound to a sacrificial stone while a knife is raised to his throat. Ancient Jewish commentary said the experience was so traumatic for Isaac that he was permanently damaged, which is why, the Jewish teachers said, we hear almost nothing from him after that. So, we all see the story of trauma and abuse but is there anything else? One of my seminary professors used to say we should ask of the text at least two questions: What did it mean then, and what does it mean now? We often rush (for good reason) to the NOW, but if we allow ourselves to get inside the biblical story and understand it from the viewpoint of another time and place, we might find something THEN that is also applicable NOW.
We know that child sacrifice was practiced not only by the Canaanites, but also by the early Hebrews, who worshiped Yahweh, Israel’s God. But sometime after 620 B.C. under the reforms of Israel’s King, Josiah, the cultic space where child sacrifice had been practiced was destroyed, and some scholars interpret the story of Isaac’s near sacrifice as part of a reform, outlawing all child sacrifice. Now this offers some important historical perspective, but a critique of child sacrifice is probably not how the story functioned as sacred scripture for either the Jews or early Christians. The story was about a test, a test of Abraham’s faith in God. “By faith,” the text in Hebrews reads, “Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac.” According to the Genesis story this was a real test, because God did not know how Abraham would respond.
Abraham’s whole story is a journey of faith. It began when God told him to move to a new land, which “I will give to you and your descendants,” God said. But Abraham and his wife did not have any children, so Abraham was promised something extraordinary. Yet Abraham and Sarah went, and throughout Genesis we have a number of stories about how they both struggled to believe and trust God. It was not easy going; there were a lot of bumps along the way, examples of both faith and unbelief, but finally Isaac was born, and the promise looked fulfilled. At the end of chapter 21, immediately preceding this morning’s lesson, Abraham had settled in the land that although was not yet his, was nonetheless, the land of promise, and there he planted a tree and called God the everlasting one. Finally, Abraham seemed to be settled.
And then God intruded. The reader or the hearer is told straight away that the command to sacrifice Isaac is a test. Now understand that the community of faith who heard this story, Jews and later Christians, knew that Isaac’s life was spared, so there is no real fear that the horror will come to pass. The story’s emphasis is placed upon Abraham, not Isaac. If we get into Abraham’s head, we can imagine him wondering why God would take back the promise God had fulfilled. And what strikes me as so peculiar is that this man who had argued with God over the threatened destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the man who had bargained with God that if he found at least 100, then 50, then ten just people, the cities would be spared! Abraham had bargained for a city but did not bargain for his own son.
He asked no questions and raised no protest. The story is told in such a way that there is no doubt that the command is God’s. Of course, we today would immediately say that God does not command such things, but that conviction is now, not then. The Abraham who now faces God at Moriah is not the same man who had faced God at Sodom and Gomorrah. Remember, that despite Abraham’s clever bargaining, he could not find 10 just people, and so the cities were destroyed for their wickedness. God in that story had seen and
known something Abraham had not seen or known. But in today’s story God does not know everything. God does not know what Abraham will do. The story is presented as a real test, but it is also a temptation. God is tempting Abraham.
A temptation always means that there are alternative choices. In this story, the choice is between obeying God or disobeying, and obedience here means trust, trusting that what God demands is ultimately life fulfilling, not life denying. Though we recoil in horror, the story is not first of all about us. It is about Abraham and his faith that what God commands is life, full and abundant life. We do come into the story, but only after we understand what it is that Abraham has learned.
And what Abraham learned and saw was that God will provide. These are the very words spoken by Abraham to his son, when Isaac asked his father where the lamb for the sacrifice was. “God will provide,” Abraham answered, or a better translation of the Hebrew text would be, “God will see it, the lamb for a burnt offering, my Son”, or another translation, “God will see it before us, my Son.” And yes, that is the point. That is the learning. God sees before Abraham; God sees before us; God knows before Abraham; God knows before us. But, according to this story, God does not see and know everything, for if God did, why would God have bothered to test, to tempt Abraham? Staying within the boundaries of this story puts us face to face with a God who tempts, a God who tests. And the tests and temptation are horrifying. No wonder, Jesus, who immediately after his baptism was led into the wilderness not by Satan but by the Spirit, where he was tempted by Satan, taught us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” Presumably Jesus prayed those words, because he knew that God had led him and others right smack into temptation’s depths.
Now some interpreters have argued that Abraham’s faith was such that he knew God would spare his son, since he said to his companions, when Isaac and he departed from them on the final leg of the journey, “We will return to you.” But the story’s power derives from the uncertainty of the journey. It was uncertain for Abraham as well as for God, and when Abraham lifted the knife to slay his son, the story means to say that he was going to carry it through. And when God saw that, then God knew.
“Now I know,” God said to Abraham. God now knows that Abraham will not withhold anything from God, not even the promised son, the son on whom the whole promise seems to depend. And because of what God now knows and sees, God provides the ram, and Abraham now sees what God provides. Abraham sees the ram, caught in the thicket. So, we have here a real relationship between God and Abraham with both of them learning something they did not know before.
William Willimon was for years the preacher and chaplain at the Duke University Chapel in North Carolina, and before that he served churches as a minister. Well, during one Bible study people were discussing and even arguing over this very story. What does it mean to you? Willimon asked. “ I’ll tell you what it means,” one middle aged man said. “It means that my family and I are going to begin looking for another church.” “But why”? Willimon asked in astonishment. “Because when I look at the God of Abraham”, the man continued, “I feel I’m near a real God, not the sort of dignified, business like Rotary club god we chatter about here on Sunday mornings. Abraham’s God could blow a man to bits, give and then take a child, ask for everything from a person and then want more. I want to meet that kind of God. It would at least be interesting.”
Interesting, yes, but also terrifying. And isn’t that too what the story also suggests? The God of Abraham cannot so easily be roped into the corral of our comfortable thoughts, where we tend to make God sound so safe and tame. Do any of you recall C.S. Lewis famous Christian allegory, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, where Aslan, the lion, is a symbol for Christ. Someone reminds the children that Aslan is not safe, though he is good.
Life is not safe, and often, like Abraham, we think we have arrived at the point of security only to have something crashing through the walls of our safety---like this dreadful virus. And then we wonder where God is, what God is up to. Like Abraham we would like to settle in the place where we can plant a tree and feel secure. Abraham had arrived in the promised land and would have liked to watch the tree he planted grow. But he was told to go on another journey. And so are we all. So is the church, pulled and pushed by circumstances we do not always control or understand. We ask, “Where is God in these circumstances?” And often times we do not know; we do not see---until we have taken some risks (as Abraham did) and in the thick of things (or in the thicket, as the text says) we see that God provides.
Genesis 22: 1-14
There is probably no more troubling text in all of scripture than the story of God’s command to Abraham that he offer his son Isaac as a burnt offering to God. Alice Miller, a famous German psychiatrist, used this story as a searing critique of abusive child rearing practices. God, she said, is here portrayed as the ultimate child abuser, and this is hardly the role model we want or need. Feminist biblical interpretation has also followed that line of thought, extending it to Jesus, who has been understood as the sacrifice for human sin. Such a God, the feminists contend, would not be worthy of our devotion, trust and love.
So yes, this story is troubling, because even if God had no intention of accepting the sacrifice, Abraham did not know that. And think of poor terrified Isaac, bound to a sacrificial stone while a knife is raised to his throat. Ancient Jewish commentary said the experience was so traumatic for Isaac that he was permanently damaged, which is why, the Jewish teachers said, we hear almost nothing from him after that. So, we all see the story of trauma and abuse but is there anything else? One of my seminary professors used to say we should ask of the text at least two questions: What did it mean then, and what does it mean now? We often rush (for good reason) to the NOW, but if we allow ourselves to get inside the biblical story and understand it from the viewpoint of another time and place, we might find something THEN that is also applicable NOW.
We know that child sacrifice was practiced not only by the Canaanites, but also by the early Hebrews, who worshiped Yahweh, Israel’s God. But sometime after 620 B.C. under the reforms of Israel’s King, Josiah, the cultic space where child sacrifice had been practiced was destroyed, and some scholars interpret the story of Isaac’s near sacrifice as part of a reform, outlawing all child sacrifice. Now this offers some important historical perspective, but a critique of child sacrifice is probably not how the story functioned as sacred scripture for either the Jews or early Christians. The story was about a test, a test of Abraham’s faith in God. “By faith,” the text in Hebrews reads, “Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac.” According to the Genesis story this was a real test, because God did not know how Abraham would respond.
Abraham’s whole story is a journey of faith. It began when God told him to move to a new land, which “I will give to you and your descendants,” God said. But Abraham and his wife did not have any children, so Abraham was promised something extraordinary. Yet Abraham and Sarah went, and throughout Genesis we have a number of stories about how they both struggled to believe and trust God. It was not easy going; there were a lot of bumps along the way, examples of both faith and unbelief, but finally Isaac was born, and the promise looked fulfilled. At the end of chapter 21, immediately preceding this morning’s lesson, Abraham had settled in the land that although was not yet his, was nonetheless, the land of promise, and there he planted a tree and called God the everlasting one. Finally, Abraham seemed to be settled.
And then God intruded. The reader or the hearer is told straight away that the command to sacrifice Isaac is a test. Now understand that the community of faith who heard this story, Jews and later Christians, knew that Isaac’s life was spared, so there is no real fear that the horror will come to pass. The story’s emphasis is placed upon Abraham, not Isaac. If we get into Abraham’s head, we can imagine him wondering why God would take back the promise God had fulfilled. And what strikes me as so peculiar is that this man who had argued with God over the threatened destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the man who had bargained with God that if he found at least 100, then 50, then ten just people, the cities would be spared! Abraham had bargained for a city but did not bargain for his own son.
He asked no questions and raised no protest. The story is told in such a way that there is no doubt that the command is God’s. Of course, we today would immediately say that God does not command such things, but that conviction is now, not then. The Abraham who now faces God at Moriah is not the same man who had faced God at Sodom and Gomorrah. Remember, that despite Abraham’s clever bargaining, he could not find 10 just people, and so the cities were destroyed for their wickedness. God in that story had seen and
known something Abraham had not seen or known. But in today’s story God does not know everything. God does not know what Abraham will do. The story is presented as a real test, but it is also a temptation. God is tempting Abraham.
A temptation always means that there are alternative choices. In this story, the choice is between obeying God or disobeying, and obedience here means trust, trusting that what God demands is ultimately life fulfilling, not life denying. Though we recoil in horror, the story is not first of all about us. It is about Abraham and his faith that what God commands is life, full and abundant life. We do come into the story, but only after we understand what it is that Abraham has learned.
And what Abraham learned and saw was that God will provide. These are the very words spoken by Abraham to his son, when Isaac asked his father where the lamb for the sacrifice was. “God will provide,” Abraham answered, or a better translation of the Hebrew text would be, “God will see it, the lamb for a burnt offering, my Son”, or another translation, “God will see it before us, my Son.” And yes, that is the point. That is the learning. God sees before Abraham; God sees before us; God knows before Abraham; God knows before us. But, according to this story, God does not see and know everything, for if God did, why would God have bothered to test, to tempt Abraham? Staying within the boundaries of this story puts us face to face with a God who tempts, a God who tests. And the tests and temptation are horrifying. No wonder, Jesus, who immediately after his baptism was led into the wilderness not by Satan but by the Spirit, where he was tempted by Satan, taught us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” Presumably Jesus prayed those words, because he knew that God had led him and others right smack into temptation’s depths.
Now some interpreters have argued that Abraham’s faith was such that he knew God would spare his son, since he said to his companions, when Isaac and he departed from them on the final leg of the journey, “We will return to you.” But the story’s power derives from the uncertainty of the journey. It was uncertain for Abraham as well as for God, and when Abraham lifted the knife to slay his son, the story means to say that he was going to carry it through. And when God saw that, then God knew.
“Now I know,” God said to Abraham. God now knows that Abraham will not withhold anything from God, not even the promised son, the son on whom the whole promise seems to depend. And because of what God now knows and sees, God provides the ram, and Abraham now sees what God provides. Abraham sees the ram, caught in the thicket. So, we have here a real relationship between God and Abraham with both of them learning something they did not know before.
William Willimon was for years the preacher and chaplain at the Duke University Chapel in North Carolina, and before that he served churches as a minister. Well, during one Bible study people were discussing and even arguing over this very story. What does it mean to you? Willimon asked. “ I’ll tell you what it means,” one middle aged man said. “It means that my family and I are going to begin looking for another church.” “But why”? Willimon asked in astonishment. “Because when I look at the God of Abraham”, the man continued, “I feel I’m near a real God, not the sort of dignified, business like Rotary club god we chatter about here on Sunday mornings. Abraham’s God could blow a man to bits, give and then take a child, ask for everything from a person and then want more. I want to meet that kind of God. It would at least be interesting.”
Interesting, yes, but also terrifying. And isn’t that too what the story also suggests? The God of Abraham cannot so easily be roped into the corral of our comfortable thoughts, where we tend to make God sound so safe and tame. Do any of you recall C.S. Lewis famous Christian allegory, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, where Aslan, the lion, is a symbol for Christ. Someone reminds the children that Aslan is not safe, though he is good.
Life is not safe, and often, like Abraham, we think we have arrived at the point of security only to have something crashing through the walls of our safety---like this dreadful virus. And then we wonder where God is, what God is up to. Like Abraham we would like to settle in the place where we can plant a tree and feel secure. Abraham had arrived in the promised land and would have liked to watch the tree he planted grow. But he was told to go on another journey. And so are we all. So is the church, pulled and pushed by circumstances we do not always control or understand. We ask, “Where is God in these circumstances?” And often times we do not know; we do not see---until we have taken some risks (as Abraham did) and in the thick of things (or in the thicket, as the text says) we see that God provides.
June 18, 2020
Dear Friends,
There are two special days approaching, which we should note and celebrate. The first one is June 19th, known as Juneteenth and the second is Father’s Day, celebrated this year on June 21st. Many of you are probably unaware of Juneteenth; I only learned about it quite recently, though its first celebrations actually go back to June 19, 1865, when newly freed African-Americans celebrated their emancipation from the curse of slavery.
On January 1, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in only those states in rebellion against the Union. Enslavers were supposed to inform their slaves they were free but SURPRISE, most never said a word, so the good news of emancipation travelled via other routes! On June 19, 1865 Major General Gordan Granger announced in Galveston, Texas to a resistant and shocked crowd that President Lincoln had actually freed the slaves 2.5 years earlier! Texas, by the way, was the last state to make the announcement. So, Juneteenth, a combination of the words June and nineteenth, became a day to celebrate emancipation, though actually it was the 13th Amendment that officially ended slavery in all states. Today there are forty seven states, which recognize Juneteenth as a day of celebration, usually accompanied with marches, dinners and speeches, reminding all of us of the long walk and struggle to freedom, which continue even now. We are still walking, struggling, pushing, pulling, moaning and groaning as we try to make actual what was promised over a century ago. Given all that has been going on in our country lately, we should realize how much more work needs to be done. While certainly ALL lives matter, it has been the sin of our country that black lives have not been included in the word ALL, and so, it is necessary that we raise the banner, Black Lives Matter. There is a particularity to the story of black lives in our nation that demands our careful attention so we can hear the pain and the outrage of lives that have been treated as if they mattered not at all.
An now Father’s Day: You may recall that Mother’s Day had its beginning when Julia Ward Howe in 1870 issued a proclamation, calling on women to refuse to send their sons and husbands to war to kill the sons and husbands of women in other countries. So, death was very much on the minds of women who understood Mother’s Day as a protest against war. And death was also on the minds of people who gathered on July 5, 1908 in Fairmont, West Virginia for a service remembering the fathers killed in a mining accident in December 1907 in the town of Monongah. 361 men died that day, 250 of them fathers, which left over 1000 children fatherless. Grace Golden Clayton was mourning the death of her own father, when the accident occurred, and she suggested to the minister of her church that particular attention be paid to the fathers, who were killed, and so she chose the Sunday nearest to her father’s birthday as the day for the service.
Clayton was a shy and retiring woman, and she did not push the event outside her immediate home, but she may have been influenced by Anna Jarvis’s crusade to establish an official Mother’s Day. Two months prior Jarvis had held a celebration for her dead mother in Grafton, West Virginia, a town about 15 miles away from Fairmont, and it is very possible that Clayton knew of that event.
The first real celebration of Father’s Day occurred in Spokane, Washington in 1910, when Sonora Smart Dodd pushed her own pastor to honor fathers. Dodd’s father, William Jackson Smart, was a Civil War veteran and a single parent, who raised his six children alone. Dodd had apparently heard a sermon about Anna Jarvis’ Mother’s Day, and so she told her pastor that fathers should have a similar day of celebration. She initially chose June 5, her father’s birthday, but the pastors in the area did not have enough time to prepare their sermons, so the date was moved to the third Sunday of June.
Dodd worked intermittently to get Father’s Day officially recognized, but during the 20’s she lived in Chicago, studying at The Art Institute and did very little to promote Father’s Day. But when she returned to Spokane in the 30’s, she took up the cause again, this time with the support of manufacturers, who could see the economic advantage of the day. In fact, the economic advantage was one of the main reasons there was strong resistance to the idea of a Father’s Day. Some people feared fathers would be lost in a pile of presents, pushed by people, eager to make money.
There were a number of other earlier attempts to recognize fathers. The famous reformer, Jane Addams, tried to get the City of Chicago to recognize fathers in 1911, but she was turned down. Harry Meek, a member of the Lions Club International, claimed he had an idea for Father’s Day in 1915, and President Woodrow Wilson tried to get Congress to honor fathers, but his idea was ignored. President Calvin Coolidge recommended in 1924 that the day be observed, but he never made an official proclamation about it. In 1957 Margaret Chase Smith, senator from Maine, accused Congress of ignoring fathers while honoring mothers, but Congress simply ignored Senator Smith’s accusation. In 1966 President Lyndon Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers, designating the third Sunday of June as Father’s Day. Six years later President Richard Nixon made it a permanent national holiday.
So, here we have two important days to note and celebrate. Juneteenth is not officially recognized by the federal government, though NOW (with all that has been happening) there are many people pushing for such recognition. And Father’s Day, well, we recognize and celebrate it, but while President Wilson succeeded in making Mother’s Day official in 1914, it was not until 1972 that President Nixon was able to achieve the same for fathers. I wonder why it took so long! And while we are on the subject of certain things taking so long to be recognized, consider that most Americans have not even heard of Juneteenth! Perhaps this year it will be different.
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
Dear Friends,
There are two special days approaching, which we should note and celebrate. The first one is June 19th, known as Juneteenth and the second is Father’s Day, celebrated this year on June 21st. Many of you are probably unaware of Juneteenth; I only learned about it quite recently, though its first celebrations actually go back to June 19, 1865, when newly freed African-Americans celebrated their emancipation from the curse of slavery.
On January 1, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in only those states in rebellion against the Union. Enslavers were supposed to inform their slaves they were free but SURPRISE, most never said a word, so the good news of emancipation travelled via other routes! On June 19, 1865 Major General Gordan Granger announced in Galveston, Texas to a resistant and shocked crowd that President Lincoln had actually freed the slaves 2.5 years earlier! Texas, by the way, was the last state to make the announcement. So, Juneteenth, a combination of the words June and nineteenth, became a day to celebrate emancipation, though actually it was the 13th Amendment that officially ended slavery in all states. Today there are forty seven states, which recognize Juneteenth as a day of celebration, usually accompanied with marches, dinners and speeches, reminding all of us of the long walk and struggle to freedom, which continue even now. We are still walking, struggling, pushing, pulling, moaning and groaning as we try to make actual what was promised over a century ago. Given all that has been going on in our country lately, we should realize how much more work needs to be done. While certainly ALL lives matter, it has been the sin of our country that black lives have not been included in the word ALL, and so, it is necessary that we raise the banner, Black Lives Matter. There is a particularity to the story of black lives in our nation that demands our careful attention so we can hear the pain and the outrage of lives that have been treated as if they mattered not at all.
An now Father’s Day: You may recall that Mother’s Day had its beginning when Julia Ward Howe in 1870 issued a proclamation, calling on women to refuse to send their sons and husbands to war to kill the sons and husbands of women in other countries. So, death was very much on the minds of women who understood Mother’s Day as a protest against war. And death was also on the minds of people who gathered on July 5, 1908 in Fairmont, West Virginia for a service remembering the fathers killed in a mining accident in December 1907 in the town of Monongah. 361 men died that day, 250 of them fathers, which left over 1000 children fatherless. Grace Golden Clayton was mourning the death of her own father, when the accident occurred, and she suggested to the minister of her church that particular attention be paid to the fathers, who were killed, and so she chose the Sunday nearest to her father’s birthday as the day for the service.
Clayton was a shy and retiring woman, and she did not push the event outside her immediate home, but she may have been influenced by Anna Jarvis’s crusade to establish an official Mother’s Day. Two months prior Jarvis had held a celebration for her dead mother in Grafton, West Virginia, a town about 15 miles away from Fairmont, and it is very possible that Clayton knew of that event.
The first real celebration of Father’s Day occurred in Spokane, Washington in 1910, when Sonora Smart Dodd pushed her own pastor to honor fathers. Dodd’s father, William Jackson Smart, was a Civil War veteran and a single parent, who raised his six children alone. Dodd had apparently heard a sermon about Anna Jarvis’ Mother’s Day, and so she told her pastor that fathers should have a similar day of celebration. She initially chose June 5, her father’s birthday, but the pastors in the area did not have enough time to prepare their sermons, so the date was moved to the third Sunday of June.
Dodd worked intermittently to get Father’s Day officially recognized, but during the 20’s she lived in Chicago, studying at The Art Institute and did very little to promote Father’s Day. But when she returned to Spokane in the 30’s, she took up the cause again, this time with the support of manufacturers, who could see the economic advantage of the day. In fact, the economic advantage was one of the main reasons there was strong resistance to the idea of a Father’s Day. Some people feared fathers would be lost in a pile of presents, pushed by people, eager to make money.
There were a number of other earlier attempts to recognize fathers. The famous reformer, Jane Addams, tried to get the City of Chicago to recognize fathers in 1911, but she was turned down. Harry Meek, a member of the Lions Club International, claimed he had an idea for Father’s Day in 1915, and President Woodrow Wilson tried to get Congress to honor fathers, but his idea was ignored. President Calvin Coolidge recommended in 1924 that the day be observed, but he never made an official proclamation about it. In 1957 Margaret Chase Smith, senator from Maine, accused Congress of ignoring fathers while honoring mothers, but Congress simply ignored Senator Smith’s accusation. In 1966 President Lyndon Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers, designating the third Sunday of June as Father’s Day. Six years later President Richard Nixon made it a permanent national holiday.
So, here we have two important days to note and celebrate. Juneteenth is not officially recognized by the federal government, though NOW (with all that has been happening) there are many people pushing for such recognition. And Father’s Day, well, we recognize and celebrate it, but while President Wilson succeeded in making Mother’s Day official in 1914, it was not until 1972 that President Nixon was able to achieve the same for fathers. I wonder why it took so long! And while we are on the subject of certain things taking so long to be recognized, consider that most Americans have not even heard of Juneteenth! Perhaps this year it will be different.
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
WHAT THEN ARE WE TO SAY? by: Rev. Sandra L. Olsen 6/21/2020
Genesis 21: 8-21
Romans 5: 18- 6: 4
What then are we to say? The 6th chapter of Romans begins with that question, and there are many situations in life, when suddenly that becomes the primary question, before anything else comes to mind. Did we not feel that way, when horrified by witnessing the killing of George Floyd, who among us really had the appropriate words to utter. What could we say? What are we to say about 116,000 American deaths from Covid-19, or God knows how many deaths in Syria’s civil war or the war in Yemen---both of them primarily targeted against civilians. What then are we to say?
What are we to say on this Father’s Day, when the lectionary gives us a story about a father, who does not go out of his way to protect his first born son from his spiteful wife, who now that she has given birth to Isaac, is concerned that Ishmael will try to supplant her son. Let me refresh your memory, or perhaps your new knowledge of the story. Last week you heard how Sarah laughed when she learned she would be a mother at her advanced age. She did not believe it; she had borne the curse of barrenness for so long. And make no mistake about it: being barren was experienced as a curse; the fault was always assigned to the woman. And so, Sarah had this plan. She told Abraham to sleep with her Egyptian slave, Hagar, because the child born to the slave would by rights be Sarah’s. And so, Abraham with no protest at all, I might add, did as his wife commanded, and Hagar conceived. Of course, no one asked Hagar, the slave, what she thought of this plan. She was treated as an object to be used as others saw fit. And once Hagar was pregnant, she suddenly had some power, and she lorded it over Sarah, treating her mistress with contempt. So, Sarah responded harshly, and Hagar ran away. She returned only after God promised her that her son, Ishmael, would one day be head of a great nation. Hagar, by the way, is the only biblical matriarch whom God promises to make of her descendants a great nation, becoming the nation of Islam.
So, Sarah gave birth to Isaac, whose name means, the one who brings laughter, and I guess we should not be surprised that the two boys are pitted against each other by Sarah. She sees them playing together, and something in that scene disturbs her, so she tells Abraham to cast both Hagar and Ishmael out into the wilderness. And that is a death sentence for both mother and child. Oh, the text tells us that Abraham was distressed, but he did not stand up to his wife, apparently because God reassured him that all would be well, since God had a plan for both sons. At least this is what is written many centuries after Abraham lived. Perhaps the biblical writers wanted to let Abraham and Sarah off the hook, so she did not seem quite so cruel and he did not seem quite so cowardly. And so Hagar and Ishmael were cast out into the wilderness. Abraham gave them some bread and water, which quickly ran out. And poor, distraught Hagar. Remember some of those famous paintings you saw---how completely beside herself Hagar was. And why wouldn’t she be? Would not any mother worthy of the name mother be distraught? She lays her son down, and moves away, so she cannot see him die.
I have known some mothers like that; I have seen them in hospitals, their children dying of leukemia or some other dreaded disease. I even recall one mother, whose son was dying of a gunshot wound, inflicted by a gang member. Some of them could not bear to be there when their child died. “I heard his first cry,” one mother said to me. “I saw him take his first breath. God, forgive, me but I cannot watch him take his last. I don’t have the strength; I cannot do it. God, forgive me.” God has nothing to forgive, I answered, because we cannot do what is impossible for us to do. And watching her son die was impossible for Hagar. So, she moves away, and that is when the angel hears. Hagar lifted up her voice and wept, and the angel also heard the voice of Ishmael. God heard, and they were saved, saved by the angel of God. The name Ishmael, by the way, means God hears. Hagar, who could not bear to look at her son, then looks up and sees the water that will save both their lives.
This is a very tough story, a story of abuse really, because Hagar and Ishmael had no agency at all. She was a slave, a pawn in someone else’s story. And Ishmael was a child, and children in ancient Israel had no rights at all. Though God had promised Abraham that Ishmael would become a great nation, Hagar was not included in that conversation. Perhaps she remembered what God had promised her when she was pregnant, but that was some years ago. Had God changed God’s mind? Surely, she must have wondered, as her son and she faced death.
Slaves had and have no rights and make no mistakes about this: there are still slaves today: an estimated 40.3 million in the world, over 400,000 of them in the United States today. Some of them in our country live with their slaveholder, caring for their children, keeping house for them, but they have no freedom and no money. A few years ago, in the June, 2017 edition of The Atlantic, Alex Tizon wrote an essay about the slave his family owned. It took him years to understand that the woman who lived with his family and loved them was a slave.
Slavery, we all understand, is part of our national legacy. Some say it is the original sin of our nation’s founding, which has spawned the racism that yet infects our nation today. All men are created equal, Thomas Jefferson had written in The Declaration of Independence, but neither women nor persons of color were included. “I tremble for my country,” Jefferson also wrote, “when I consider that God is just.” He knew what he was saying, just as he knew what he was doing.
When Jefferson’s wife lay dying, she extracted from him a promise that he would not remarry, and he kept that promise by making his slave, Sally Hemings, his concubine, fathering six children with her. Hemings, by the way, was his wife’s half-sister. Jefferson was in Paris as an American representative to the French government, and Hemings came to Paris as his slave. And it was in Paris that the relationship began. When he was getting ready to return to the United States in 1789 to become Secretary of State, he wanted Hemings to return with him, and all she had to do was go to Paris City Hall and say, “I’m a slave being held here,” and she would be free. Her brother was there, and he could have helped her. But this is not what Hemings did. She negotiated with Jefferson, promising she would return with him, if he promised to free any children they had together, when the children came of age. Their relationship was maintained for another 40 years, though she never came to live with him in Washington, when he was President. Jefferson was embarrassed about the relationship, which did make the news---though he denied it. But when he died, the only slaves he freed in his will, were descendants of Hemings and him.
Don’t we wonder where God is in all of this? What was God doing in the midst of all this slavery? We never hear God commanding Abraham and Sarah to free Hagar. Neither Jesus nor the Apostle Paul ever once spoke against the institution of slavery. God works in history, we say, but history often moves slowly, and God does not seem to push it faster or farther than human beings are ready to move and to go. But sometimes there are these shifts, turning points, where suddenly something different appears, when the old ways of doing and understanding just don’t work in the same way. Remember, November 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall suddenly came down. None of us was expecting that. Change comes, and when we look back, we sometimes see that God is in the change, helping people to move toward a new future.
The Bible was not written as the events occurred. Some stories were written not simply decades later (as is often the case in the gospels) but centuries later (as in some of the Old Testament stories). They were written as people looked back, reconsidering what it was they had been through and what it all meant. And that is when they saw God’s hand and heard God’s voice, understanding that God had been with them all the time, even if they did not know it. And where is God now for us as we as a people and a nation face hard questions and the heart wrenching cry for a new beginning?
Genesis 21: 8-21
Romans 5: 18- 6: 4
What then are we to say? The 6th chapter of Romans begins with that question, and there are many situations in life, when suddenly that becomes the primary question, before anything else comes to mind. Did we not feel that way, when horrified by witnessing the killing of George Floyd, who among us really had the appropriate words to utter. What could we say? What are we to say about 116,000 American deaths from Covid-19, or God knows how many deaths in Syria’s civil war or the war in Yemen---both of them primarily targeted against civilians. What then are we to say?
What are we to say on this Father’s Day, when the lectionary gives us a story about a father, who does not go out of his way to protect his first born son from his spiteful wife, who now that she has given birth to Isaac, is concerned that Ishmael will try to supplant her son. Let me refresh your memory, or perhaps your new knowledge of the story. Last week you heard how Sarah laughed when she learned she would be a mother at her advanced age. She did not believe it; she had borne the curse of barrenness for so long. And make no mistake about it: being barren was experienced as a curse; the fault was always assigned to the woman. And so, Sarah had this plan. She told Abraham to sleep with her Egyptian slave, Hagar, because the child born to the slave would by rights be Sarah’s. And so, Abraham with no protest at all, I might add, did as his wife commanded, and Hagar conceived. Of course, no one asked Hagar, the slave, what she thought of this plan. She was treated as an object to be used as others saw fit. And once Hagar was pregnant, she suddenly had some power, and she lorded it over Sarah, treating her mistress with contempt. So, Sarah responded harshly, and Hagar ran away. She returned only after God promised her that her son, Ishmael, would one day be head of a great nation. Hagar, by the way, is the only biblical matriarch whom God promises to make of her descendants a great nation, becoming the nation of Islam.
So, Sarah gave birth to Isaac, whose name means, the one who brings laughter, and I guess we should not be surprised that the two boys are pitted against each other by Sarah. She sees them playing together, and something in that scene disturbs her, so she tells Abraham to cast both Hagar and Ishmael out into the wilderness. And that is a death sentence for both mother and child. Oh, the text tells us that Abraham was distressed, but he did not stand up to his wife, apparently because God reassured him that all would be well, since God had a plan for both sons. At least this is what is written many centuries after Abraham lived. Perhaps the biblical writers wanted to let Abraham and Sarah off the hook, so she did not seem quite so cruel and he did not seem quite so cowardly. And so Hagar and Ishmael were cast out into the wilderness. Abraham gave them some bread and water, which quickly ran out. And poor, distraught Hagar. Remember some of those famous paintings you saw---how completely beside herself Hagar was. And why wouldn’t she be? Would not any mother worthy of the name mother be distraught? She lays her son down, and moves away, so she cannot see him die.
I have known some mothers like that; I have seen them in hospitals, their children dying of leukemia or some other dreaded disease. I even recall one mother, whose son was dying of a gunshot wound, inflicted by a gang member. Some of them could not bear to be there when their child died. “I heard his first cry,” one mother said to me. “I saw him take his first breath. God, forgive, me but I cannot watch him take his last. I don’t have the strength; I cannot do it. God, forgive me.” God has nothing to forgive, I answered, because we cannot do what is impossible for us to do. And watching her son die was impossible for Hagar. So, she moves away, and that is when the angel hears. Hagar lifted up her voice and wept, and the angel also heard the voice of Ishmael. God heard, and they were saved, saved by the angel of God. The name Ishmael, by the way, means God hears. Hagar, who could not bear to look at her son, then looks up and sees the water that will save both their lives.
This is a very tough story, a story of abuse really, because Hagar and Ishmael had no agency at all. She was a slave, a pawn in someone else’s story. And Ishmael was a child, and children in ancient Israel had no rights at all. Though God had promised Abraham that Ishmael would become a great nation, Hagar was not included in that conversation. Perhaps she remembered what God had promised her when she was pregnant, but that was some years ago. Had God changed God’s mind? Surely, she must have wondered, as her son and she faced death.
Slaves had and have no rights and make no mistakes about this: there are still slaves today: an estimated 40.3 million in the world, over 400,000 of them in the United States today. Some of them in our country live with their slaveholder, caring for their children, keeping house for them, but they have no freedom and no money. A few years ago, in the June, 2017 edition of The Atlantic, Alex Tizon wrote an essay about the slave his family owned. It took him years to understand that the woman who lived with his family and loved them was a slave.
Slavery, we all understand, is part of our national legacy. Some say it is the original sin of our nation’s founding, which has spawned the racism that yet infects our nation today. All men are created equal, Thomas Jefferson had written in The Declaration of Independence, but neither women nor persons of color were included. “I tremble for my country,” Jefferson also wrote, “when I consider that God is just.” He knew what he was saying, just as he knew what he was doing.
When Jefferson’s wife lay dying, she extracted from him a promise that he would not remarry, and he kept that promise by making his slave, Sally Hemings, his concubine, fathering six children with her. Hemings, by the way, was his wife’s half-sister. Jefferson was in Paris as an American representative to the French government, and Hemings came to Paris as his slave. And it was in Paris that the relationship began. When he was getting ready to return to the United States in 1789 to become Secretary of State, he wanted Hemings to return with him, and all she had to do was go to Paris City Hall and say, “I’m a slave being held here,” and she would be free. Her brother was there, and he could have helped her. But this is not what Hemings did. She negotiated with Jefferson, promising she would return with him, if he promised to free any children they had together, when the children came of age. Their relationship was maintained for another 40 years, though she never came to live with him in Washington, when he was President. Jefferson was embarrassed about the relationship, which did make the news---though he denied it. But when he died, the only slaves he freed in his will, were descendants of Hemings and him.
Don’t we wonder where God is in all of this? What was God doing in the midst of all this slavery? We never hear God commanding Abraham and Sarah to free Hagar. Neither Jesus nor the Apostle Paul ever once spoke against the institution of slavery. God works in history, we say, but history often moves slowly, and God does not seem to push it faster or farther than human beings are ready to move and to go. But sometimes there are these shifts, turning points, where suddenly something different appears, when the old ways of doing and understanding just don’t work in the same way. Remember, November 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall suddenly came down. None of us was expecting that. Change comes, and when we look back, we sometimes see that God is in the change, helping people to move toward a new future.
The Bible was not written as the events occurred. Some stories were written not simply decades later (as is often the case in the gospels) but centuries later (as in some of the Old Testament stories). They were written as people looked back, reconsidering what it was they had been through and what it all meant. And that is when they saw God’s hand and heard God’s voice, understanding that God had been with them all the time, even if they did not know it. And where is God now for us as we as a people and a nation face hard questions and the heart wrenching cry for a new beginning?
June 10, 2020
Dear Friends,
“Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” So begins Leo Tolstoy’s masterpiece, the novel, Anna Karenina. It is the story of passionate love gone awry, leading to the death of the heroine, a tale of the search for meaning with the theme of forgiveness intruding to have its say. So, it is with greats interest that I came across an article in The Christian Science Monitor about how the pandemic has spurred reconciliation and forgiveness, particularly among families.
Karl Pillemer, a professor of human development at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, discovered that in a random study of 1300 people nearly a quarter of them was living an active estrangement from at least one family member. And true to Tolstoy’s words, the estrangement took many different forms. Some adults, for example, were estranged from parents who did not approve of their choice of a spouse. For others, it is because parents were critical of their adult children’s parenting style, sexuality or a very big one, values. One daughter had not spoken to her father in over two years, because of political differences, which translated into a painful conflict in values. But sometimes the estrangement came because the family was too close with the parents trying to assert control over their adult child. And so, independence had to be claimed. Sometimes the conflict was among siblings, who had not spoken to each other for maybe a few years or even as long as decades. But then the pandemic hit, and one estranged brother suddenly sent his sister a package of masks with a $100 bill tucked inside.
Why has the pandemic made a difference? For one thing, death no longer seemed so remote. One woman said he had thought she was reconciled to never speaking to her brother again. She used to say to herself, “Well, what if he suddenly died, would I feel terrible that I had not spoken to him? And she thought she was o.k. with that. But it proved to be all theoretical. Death was out there someplace, but when the virus hit, the theory just crumbled. She realized that if her brother suddenly died from the virus without her ever speaking to him again, she would be very upset. And so, she took the first step and called him. After talking for a long time, they concluded that the reason for their estrangement was “silly.”
Taking the first step is the hardest one to take, because there is a big fear of rejection. “What if I reach out, and I’m slapped down?” Sometimes that does happen. A woman approached her parents and tried to talk about the cruelty she felt she had endured as a child. Their response was one of anger and rejection, and so she had to work at forgiveness in a different way. For now, at least, she did not think a relationship was possible, but she still realized she had a lot of work to do forgiving them. Her hurt and anger were harming her, and so she dug deeply into books about forgiveness. One day, while “mindfully walking,” she said she felt a tremendous release. She let it go both physically and mentally, and she said she actually felt lighter as a great weight was lifted. She said she forgave her parents for not being able to give her what she needed, and she also forgave herself for needing more than they could give her.
It helps if people can allow themselves to see the situation from the other side. Relationships cut both ways, and though children and adults have unequal power, still the adult child can sometimes allow herself to see what life was like for the parent. Understanding does not remove all pain, and it does not make abuse and cruelty o.k., but it can soften some of the bluntness, helping one to let go and move on. And moving on to live one’s life in a satisfying way is what most people want to do.
People often note that when they reconcile and/or forgive, it has an impact on other areas of their life. Often, we fail to recognize how negative energy in one area negatively works in other places. And it is not only other relationships that feel the impact. One woman, after forgiving and reconciling with her father, overcame a fear of spiders that was so strong she would not allow herself to go out into the backyard with her children to play. Suddenly she found that she was no longer so terrified of spiders!
People who are working on forgiveness and reconciliation are often helped if they can recognize if they are working from a position of strength or from one of weakness. How much do you require the reconciliation, and if it is rejected, can you still forgive? This pandemic has raised many questions about relationships and what truly matters. And it has allowed some people to take chances, making themselves vulnerable in a new and different way, blessing them with an emotional and spiritual strength they had not previously imagined was possible.
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
Dear Friends,
“Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” So begins Leo Tolstoy’s masterpiece, the novel, Anna Karenina. It is the story of passionate love gone awry, leading to the death of the heroine, a tale of the search for meaning with the theme of forgiveness intruding to have its say. So, it is with greats interest that I came across an article in The Christian Science Monitor about how the pandemic has spurred reconciliation and forgiveness, particularly among families.
Karl Pillemer, a professor of human development at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, discovered that in a random study of 1300 people nearly a quarter of them was living an active estrangement from at least one family member. And true to Tolstoy’s words, the estrangement took many different forms. Some adults, for example, were estranged from parents who did not approve of their choice of a spouse. For others, it is because parents were critical of their adult children’s parenting style, sexuality or a very big one, values. One daughter had not spoken to her father in over two years, because of political differences, which translated into a painful conflict in values. But sometimes the estrangement came because the family was too close with the parents trying to assert control over their adult child. And so, independence had to be claimed. Sometimes the conflict was among siblings, who had not spoken to each other for maybe a few years or even as long as decades. But then the pandemic hit, and one estranged brother suddenly sent his sister a package of masks with a $100 bill tucked inside.
Why has the pandemic made a difference? For one thing, death no longer seemed so remote. One woman said he had thought she was reconciled to never speaking to her brother again. She used to say to herself, “Well, what if he suddenly died, would I feel terrible that I had not spoken to him? And she thought she was o.k. with that. But it proved to be all theoretical. Death was out there someplace, but when the virus hit, the theory just crumbled. She realized that if her brother suddenly died from the virus without her ever speaking to him again, she would be very upset. And so, she took the first step and called him. After talking for a long time, they concluded that the reason for their estrangement was “silly.”
Taking the first step is the hardest one to take, because there is a big fear of rejection. “What if I reach out, and I’m slapped down?” Sometimes that does happen. A woman approached her parents and tried to talk about the cruelty she felt she had endured as a child. Their response was one of anger and rejection, and so she had to work at forgiveness in a different way. For now, at least, she did not think a relationship was possible, but she still realized she had a lot of work to do forgiving them. Her hurt and anger were harming her, and so she dug deeply into books about forgiveness. One day, while “mindfully walking,” she said she felt a tremendous release. She let it go both physically and mentally, and she said she actually felt lighter as a great weight was lifted. She said she forgave her parents for not being able to give her what she needed, and she also forgave herself for needing more than they could give her.
It helps if people can allow themselves to see the situation from the other side. Relationships cut both ways, and though children and adults have unequal power, still the adult child can sometimes allow herself to see what life was like for the parent. Understanding does not remove all pain, and it does not make abuse and cruelty o.k., but it can soften some of the bluntness, helping one to let go and move on. And moving on to live one’s life in a satisfying way is what most people want to do.
People often note that when they reconcile and/or forgive, it has an impact on other areas of their life. Often, we fail to recognize how negative energy in one area negatively works in other places. And it is not only other relationships that feel the impact. One woman, after forgiving and reconciling with her father, overcame a fear of spiders that was so strong she would not allow herself to go out into the backyard with her children to play. Suddenly she found that she was no longer so terrified of spiders!
People who are working on forgiveness and reconciliation are often helped if they can recognize if they are working from a position of strength or from one of weakness. How much do you require the reconciliation, and if it is rejected, can you still forgive? This pandemic has raised many questions about relationships and what truly matters. And it has allowed some people to take chances, making themselves vulnerable in a new and different way, blessing them with an emotional and spiritual strength they had not previously imagined was possible.
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
THE GIFT OF HUMOR by Rev. Sandra L. Olsen 6/14/2020
Genesis 18: 1-15
Romans 5: 1-8
Some time ago I was reading about famous last words, and I came across a story about a bishop of the Greek Orthodox Church, who, some decades ago, lay dying, surrounded by his beloved family and friends. His breathing was barely perceptible, and at least a half dozen times people thought he had breathed his last. After a few minutes of silence and no apparent movement of the chest, his grandson said, “I think he is dead.” The son, feeling his father’s feet, responded, “His feet are still warm. He can’t be dead.” At which point the dying man opened his eyes, and said, “That’s how Joan of Arc died.!” Then closing his eyes, within a few minutes he breathed his last. His family, still trying to recover from the shock of his final words, could do nothing but laugh!
My father would have loved that story, because he was someone who tried very hard to find the humor in almost all situations. When I was growing up one of his favorite quotes was,” Life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel.” (Comedy in the classical sense means an upward movement and tragedy a downward one, so Christianity is finally comedy, since the final movement is redemption.) Of course, what most of us mean by comedy is something that makes us laugh, and who among us can deny what a marvelous gift laughter is. How would we survive without it? Doctors tell us laughter is good for the body, and a Harvard University study on ageing, which has been going on for over 60 years, claims that humor is among the most important qualities in helping people grow old gracefully. So, if laughter is so good for us, why has the church paid so little mind to its cultivation? Could it be because we have so few examples of humor and laughter in the Bible, especially in the New Testament? Jesus may be clever and shrewd, his words ironic, but who would ever call him funny? We never hear him laugh. Instead we hear other people laughing at him. For example, when he tells a father that his daughter is not dead, but only sleeping, people laugh because he appears absurd, out of touch with reality. And in Luke’s version of the beatitudes we hear Jesus bless those who weep now with the assurance that later they will laugh.
Laughter in the Old Testament may get a wider review, but it is a mixed one. When God laughs, as he does, three times in the Psalms (2:4, 37:13, 59:8) and once in Proverbs, (1:26) God fills the entire cosmos with dread. God’s laughter in these cases is not joyful, but scornful and derisive, the expression of God’s absolute power to punish those who reject His rule. It is certainly not the kind of laughter any of us wish to hear.
And then there is the case of Abraham and Sarah’s laughter, when they learn they are about to become parents at very advanced ages. In chapter 17, the one before today’s lesson, God tells Abraham that he will have a son, and Abraham splits his side laughing. He is 100 and Sarah is 90. I recall a bible study on this story some years ago, when one of the women said, “If we can get pregnant at 90, that puts new meaning into the term, the fear of God. We all laughed, because she certainly was right. Sarah laughs too---later in the next chapter, our text for today. The text says she laughed to herself, but apparently God heard it and asked Abraham why Sarah laughed. Apparently, God did not bother to ask Sarah directly, and perhaps that annoyed her. Sarah denies she laughed, out of fear I guess for not believing God, and God will not let her get away with her denial. “Oh yes, you did laugh,” God insists and then leaves, but not without assuring the elderly couple that He will return in the spring. And God does return, through the gift of Isaac whose name means “He who laughs.” When Sarah finally gives birth she says, “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.” And this is a new covenant, one consecrated in laughter for the benefit of all who hear and laugh.
Abraham and Sarah’s laughter became the occasion for a great blessing, and indeed, Jewish thought has tended to interpret laughter as a blessing. Laughter, said the Jewish rabbis, cannot be initiated on earth by human beings, but rather it is a gift of God, like breath itself. This is what God teaches Abraham and Sarah, as God converts their laugh of disbelief into one of joy, and so everyone who hears the laughter of that miracle is also converted and transformed. Jewish commentators say that while the breath, which gives life, is the first miracle God grants in creation, the second miracle is laughter. Laughter comes even before speech, which anyone knows who has ever had a baby. Babies laugh long before they ever speak.
As a child of a World War II veteran, I grew up hearing war stories. But they were almost never serious---even when the subject matter was. I recall my father telling us about the Battle of the Bulge, when the Germans were pushing back hard against the Allied troops after the Normandy invasion, and taking no prisoners. My father’s company, responsible for the ordering and coordination of supplies for the First Army, had to break camp and flee for their lives, and my father as the Master Sergeant was put in charge of about two dozen men, all of whom were Jewish intellectuals from New York City, except for one of my father’s friends, who like my father hailed from a Scandinavian heritage. The last time any of them, including my father, had handled a gun, was in basic training in North Carolina. “What did you do, Daddy?” we all wanted to know. “Well,” my father said, “the first thing I told them was to get a shovel to bury the machine gun we were given. None of us knew how to use it, and we didn’t want the Germans to use it on us. Secondly, I told them to bury the Stars of David they were wearing around their necks. And thirdly, I suggested they remember the funniest thing that ever happened to them. Humor and memory were the best things we had going for us that night.”
When one of my father’s former army buddies visited us, I remember the two men laughing until the tears rolled down their checks about how my father lied to his colonel about why he needed a shovel. “There we were,” his friend said, “out in the pitch of night, scared to death that the Germans would find us, and what were we doing: digging a hole to hide a machine gun and Stars of David, while we all cracked jokes.” It was a night the men never would forget! Surely, they learned of the intimate connection between terror and the ludicrous, what Shakespeare’s Hamlet meant when he said, “The laugh is rendered by nature itself: the language of extremes, even as tears are.” And so, laughter and tears often come, when words have done all they can. Then, we laugh or cry.
But if that is true, why didn’t the church follow the wisdom of the rabbis, who taught that laughter was the second gift of creation? I suspect it comes down to the doctrine of original sin, taught by Christians, but not by Jews. The church said that after the fall of Adam and Eve words and deeds could not be trusted. What is said is not necessarily what is truly intended. For example, the serpent, who spoke to Eve in the Garden, inviting her to eat the luscious fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, meant something else by his words, and though his words did not issue in laughter, the church fathers saw laughter as emerging from the same duplicitous process. The serpent’s words were like laughter, they said, with some other meaning lurking just beneath the surface.
And what Eve saw could also not be trusted. She saw the fruit from the tree, and it appeared good to eat. But it was not so. Eve saw what she thought was real---good fruit to eat, and she ate because of what she saw with her own eyes and heard from the serpent with her own ears. So, after the story of Adam and Eve, seeing and hearing became problems, because we cannot always trust what we see and hear. Word and deed are sometimes torn asunder, and this is not only the source of tragedy, but also the source of comedy. We often laugh when word and deed do not fit together.
The Apostle Paul sometimes preaches words of creative brilliance, inspiring and reminding us that “suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” But Paul offers no humor, so it is quite interesting that the early church fathers said the resurrection fills heaven with laughter. And when the Italian writer, Dante, wrote his great masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, about a journey beginning in hell, moving into purgatory and finally into heaven, what is heard as the final ascent is made and the celestial realm finally attained: laughter. And so, laughter comes. It comes as a blessing, the second gift of creation, and sometimes it is the very thing, the very gift, which gets us through. We laugh, and we hope that God hears us, because sometimes laughter is also our prayer.
Genesis 18: 1-15
Romans 5: 1-8
Some time ago I was reading about famous last words, and I came across a story about a bishop of the Greek Orthodox Church, who, some decades ago, lay dying, surrounded by his beloved family and friends. His breathing was barely perceptible, and at least a half dozen times people thought he had breathed his last. After a few minutes of silence and no apparent movement of the chest, his grandson said, “I think he is dead.” The son, feeling his father’s feet, responded, “His feet are still warm. He can’t be dead.” At which point the dying man opened his eyes, and said, “That’s how Joan of Arc died.!” Then closing his eyes, within a few minutes he breathed his last. His family, still trying to recover from the shock of his final words, could do nothing but laugh!
My father would have loved that story, because he was someone who tried very hard to find the humor in almost all situations. When I was growing up one of his favorite quotes was,” Life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel.” (Comedy in the classical sense means an upward movement and tragedy a downward one, so Christianity is finally comedy, since the final movement is redemption.) Of course, what most of us mean by comedy is something that makes us laugh, and who among us can deny what a marvelous gift laughter is. How would we survive without it? Doctors tell us laughter is good for the body, and a Harvard University study on ageing, which has been going on for over 60 years, claims that humor is among the most important qualities in helping people grow old gracefully. So, if laughter is so good for us, why has the church paid so little mind to its cultivation? Could it be because we have so few examples of humor and laughter in the Bible, especially in the New Testament? Jesus may be clever and shrewd, his words ironic, but who would ever call him funny? We never hear him laugh. Instead we hear other people laughing at him. For example, when he tells a father that his daughter is not dead, but only sleeping, people laugh because he appears absurd, out of touch with reality. And in Luke’s version of the beatitudes we hear Jesus bless those who weep now with the assurance that later they will laugh.
Laughter in the Old Testament may get a wider review, but it is a mixed one. When God laughs, as he does, three times in the Psalms (2:4, 37:13, 59:8) and once in Proverbs, (1:26) God fills the entire cosmos with dread. God’s laughter in these cases is not joyful, but scornful and derisive, the expression of God’s absolute power to punish those who reject His rule. It is certainly not the kind of laughter any of us wish to hear.
And then there is the case of Abraham and Sarah’s laughter, when they learn they are about to become parents at very advanced ages. In chapter 17, the one before today’s lesson, God tells Abraham that he will have a son, and Abraham splits his side laughing. He is 100 and Sarah is 90. I recall a bible study on this story some years ago, when one of the women said, “If we can get pregnant at 90, that puts new meaning into the term, the fear of God. We all laughed, because she certainly was right. Sarah laughs too---later in the next chapter, our text for today. The text says she laughed to herself, but apparently God heard it and asked Abraham why Sarah laughed. Apparently, God did not bother to ask Sarah directly, and perhaps that annoyed her. Sarah denies she laughed, out of fear I guess for not believing God, and God will not let her get away with her denial. “Oh yes, you did laugh,” God insists and then leaves, but not without assuring the elderly couple that He will return in the spring. And God does return, through the gift of Isaac whose name means “He who laughs.” When Sarah finally gives birth she says, “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.” And this is a new covenant, one consecrated in laughter for the benefit of all who hear and laugh.
Abraham and Sarah’s laughter became the occasion for a great blessing, and indeed, Jewish thought has tended to interpret laughter as a blessing. Laughter, said the Jewish rabbis, cannot be initiated on earth by human beings, but rather it is a gift of God, like breath itself. This is what God teaches Abraham and Sarah, as God converts their laugh of disbelief into one of joy, and so everyone who hears the laughter of that miracle is also converted and transformed. Jewish commentators say that while the breath, which gives life, is the first miracle God grants in creation, the second miracle is laughter. Laughter comes even before speech, which anyone knows who has ever had a baby. Babies laugh long before they ever speak.
As a child of a World War II veteran, I grew up hearing war stories. But they were almost never serious---even when the subject matter was. I recall my father telling us about the Battle of the Bulge, when the Germans were pushing back hard against the Allied troops after the Normandy invasion, and taking no prisoners. My father’s company, responsible for the ordering and coordination of supplies for the First Army, had to break camp and flee for their lives, and my father as the Master Sergeant was put in charge of about two dozen men, all of whom were Jewish intellectuals from New York City, except for one of my father’s friends, who like my father hailed from a Scandinavian heritage. The last time any of them, including my father, had handled a gun, was in basic training in North Carolina. “What did you do, Daddy?” we all wanted to know. “Well,” my father said, “the first thing I told them was to get a shovel to bury the machine gun we were given. None of us knew how to use it, and we didn’t want the Germans to use it on us. Secondly, I told them to bury the Stars of David they were wearing around their necks. And thirdly, I suggested they remember the funniest thing that ever happened to them. Humor and memory were the best things we had going for us that night.”
When one of my father’s former army buddies visited us, I remember the two men laughing until the tears rolled down their checks about how my father lied to his colonel about why he needed a shovel. “There we were,” his friend said, “out in the pitch of night, scared to death that the Germans would find us, and what were we doing: digging a hole to hide a machine gun and Stars of David, while we all cracked jokes.” It was a night the men never would forget! Surely, they learned of the intimate connection between terror and the ludicrous, what Shakespeare’s Hamlet meant when he said, “The laugh is rendered by nature itself: the language of extremes, even as tears are.” And so, laughter and tears often come, when words have done all they can. Then, we laugh or cry.
But if that is true, why didn’t the church follow the wisdom of the rabbis, who taught that laughter was the second gift of creation? I suspect it comes down to the doctrine of original sin, taught by Christians, but not by Jews. The church said that after the fall of Adam and Eve words and deeds could not be trusted. What is said is not necessarily what is truly intended. For example, the serpent, who spoke to Eve in the Garden, inviting her to eat the luscious fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, meant something else by his words, and though his words did not issue in laughter, the church fathers saw laughter as emerging from the same duplicitous process. The serpent’s words were like laughter, they said, with some other meaning lurking just beneath the surface.
And what Eve saw could also not be trusted. She saw the fruit from the tree, and it appeared good to eat. But it was not so. Eve saw what she thought was real---good fruit to eat, and she ate because of what she saw with her own eyes and heard from the serpent with her own ears. So, after the story of Adam and Eve, seeing and hearing became problems, because we cannot always trust what we see and hear. Word and deed are sometimes torn asunder, and this is not only the source of tragedy, but also the source of comedy. We often laugh when word and deed do not fit together.
The Apostle Paul sometimes preaches words of creative brilliance, inspiring and reminding us that “suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” But Paul offers no humor, so it is quite interesting that the early church fathers said the resurrection fills heaven with laughter. And when the Italian writer, Dante, wrote his great masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, about a journey beginning in hell, moving into purgatory and finally into heaven, what is heard as the final ascent is made and the celestial realm finally attained: laughter. And so, laughter comes. It comes as a blessing, the second gift of creation, and sometimes it is the very thing, the very gift, which gets us through. We laugh, and we hope that God hears us, because sometimes laughter is also our prayer.
June 3, 2020
Dear Friends,
It is now June and though not yet officially summer, June is the month we embrace as summer’s beginning. In normal times the traffic picks up as people head to the beach, week end getaways and the celebrated two week family vacation. We see SUV’s with car carriers on top and bicycles hugging the car’s rear. But this year the scene just might be very different. I recently read that 2/3 of vacations have been scrapped—airplane flights, hotels, cottage and house rentals, etc. The prediction is that more and more people will be taking day trips as they find enjoyable things to do closer to home.
Do you remember the end of the wonderful movie, The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy was asked what she had learned? And what did she say? Something like this, “If I ever go searching after my heart’s desire again, I don’t need to look any further than my own backyard.” The Straw Man said he should have been able to figure that out with his new brain, and the Tim Man said he should have felt it with his new heart, but “No,” the Good Witch, Glinda, insisted, “Dorothy had to figure it out herself.”
Indeed, there are many things we have to learn on our own, but perhaps this summer families and friends will be learning together just how many treasures there are near home. “It is the summer of the car and the local,” a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, Michael Hopkins, recently wrote. The Monitor, by the way, is stationed in Boston, so Mr. Hopkins drove to Walden Pond in Concord, MA, less than an hour from the city. This is a trip any of us could take from our homes, and if you have not been there, or if you have not been there in a number of years, why not go? In these months of enforced seclusion, it might be a good thing to look at the place where Thoreau lived for a time and ponder what he had to say. “A man (person) must generally get away some hundreds or thousands of miles from home before he can be said to begin his travels. Why not begin his travels at home?” Thoreau wondered. An excellent question in these days of cancelled vacations.
I imagine that some of you were assigned to read Walden in high school. I was not, so I never read the book in its entirety, just snippets of it here and there. I came to love Thoreau not so much for his solitude at Walden Pond as his protest, his famous “Essay on Civil Disobedience,” which anyone, who is a child of the late 60’s, surely read. He was vehemently opposed to the Mexican War, and so he refused to pay his poll tax, which landed him in jail. When his good friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, passed by the jail, he called out, “Henry, what are you doing in there?” And Thoreau reportedly answered, “Ralph, at times like this, what are you doing out there?” He did have a way with words!
And Walden is filled with wonderful words. He wrote about his stay on Walden Pond, which began on July 4, 1845, and he remained there for two years, two months and two days. Though he lived alone in the small cabin, which was 10 by 15 feet, he was not solitary. He would walk into the center of Concord, where he would meet friends and socialize. Not only was Ralph Waldo Emerson counted among his friends, but Emerson’s wife was also very fond of Thoreau. He was part of an intellectually elite group of Transcendentalists, who would discuss the big ideas of the day, but he did like his solitude at times, and so he could not always be counted on to regularly participate.
Why did he do what he did? Nine years after he left his cabin, he wrote about his experiences in the woods, writing that he wanted to “live deliberately.” Only 27 when he began his experiment, he had no attachments and no idea what the future held for him. He had lived in New York for a time, trying to pursue a writing career, but he returned home, homesick and discouraged. He began a school with his brother, John, but John died from an infected finger, and that ended not only John’s life, but also the school’s.
There are lines from the book so familiar that posters of them abound: “The mass of humanity leads lives of quiet desperation.” Or “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.” It isn’t clear what Thoreau actually discovered in his two years at Walden. He was never one to be pinned down, and since he never married or had children to raise, his financial obligations beyond himself were few. He was a man of great contradictions: He hated work but at times loved it. He embraced solitude, but he also said how much he enjoyed the company of other people. Perhaps he was a man, who needed everything on his own terms, hardly an ideal trait for marriage and a family.
I don’t know what Thoreau ever really discovered at Walden or even in his life. He died relatively young, at age 44. He seemed to be someone who thought that life was more about searching than finding. He also believed that we would be far better off if we practiced the art of keen observation, both of the natural world and other human beings. Perhaps then we would make less mistakes. And to observe carefully, you don’t have to go far away from home. So, Thoreau did not wander far away. There are novelties all around us, he would say, even in the most ordinary environments. But we have to take the time to look. When Thoreau finally left his cabin the woods behind, he said, “At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.” And so, he was, and so are we.
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
Dear Friends,
It is now June and though not yet officially summer, June is the month we embrace as summer’s beginning. In normal times the traffic picks up as people head to the beach, week end getaways and the celebrated two week family vacation. We see SUV’s with car carriers on top and bicycles hugging the car’s rear. But this year the scene just might be very different. I recently read that 2/3 of vacations have been scrapped—airplane flights, hotels, cottage and house rentals, etc. The prediction is that more and more people will be taking day trips as they find enjoyable things to do closer to home.
Do you remember the end of the wonderful movie, The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy was asked what she had learned? And what did she say? Something like this, “If I ever go searching after my heart’s desire again, I don’t need to look any further than my own backyard.” The Straw Man said he should have been able to figure that out with his new brain, and the Tim Man said he should have felt it with his new heart, but “No,” the Good Witch, Glinda, insisted, “Dorothy had to figure it out herself.”
Indeed, there are many things we have to learn on our own, but perhaps this summer families and friends will be learning together just how many treasures there are near home. “It is the summer of the car and the local,” a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, Michael Hopkins, recently wrote. The Monitor, by the way, is stationed in Boston, so Mr. Hopkins drove to Walden Pond in Concord, MA, less than an hour from the city. This is a trip any of us could take from our homes, and if you have not been there, or if you have not been there in a number of years, why not go? In these months of enforced seclusion, it might be a good thing to look at the place where Thoreau lived for a time and ponder what he had to say. “A man (person) must generally get away some hundreds or thousands of miles from home before he can be said to begin his travels. Why not begin his travels at home?” Thoreau wondered. An excellent question in these days of cancelled vacations.
I imagine that some of you were assigned to read Walden in high school. I was not, so I never read the book in its entirety, just snippets of it here and there. I came to love Thoreau not so much for his solitude at Walden Pond as his protest, his famous “Essay on Civil Disobedience,” which anyone, who is a child of the late 60’s, surely read. He was vehemently opposed to the Mexican War, and so he refused to pay his poll tax, which landed him in jail. When his good friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, passed by the jail, he called out, “Henry, what are you doing in there?” And Thoreau reportedly answered, “Ralph, at times like this, what are you doing out there?” He did have a way with words!
And Walden is filled with wonderful words. He wrote about his stay on Walden Pond, which began on July 4, 1845, and he remained there for two years, two months and two days. Though he lived alone in the small cabin, which was 10 by 15 feet, he was not solitary. He would walk into the center of Concord, where he would meet friends and socialize. Not only was Ralph Waldo Emerson counted among his friends, but Emerson’s wife was also very fond of Thoreau. He was part of an intellectually elite group of Transcendentalists, who would discuss the big ideas of the day, but he did like his solitude at times, and so he could not always be counted on to regularly participate.
Why did he do what he did? Nine years after he left his cabin, he wrote about his experiences in the woods, writing that he wanted to “live deliberately.” Only 27 when he began his experiment, he had no attachments and no idea what the future held for him. He had lived in New York for a time, trying to pursue a writing career, but he returned home, homesick and discouraged. He began a school with his brother, John, but John died from an infected finger, and that ended not only John’s life, but also the school’s.
There are lines from the book so familiar that posters of them abound: “The mass of humanity leads lives of quiet desperation.” Or “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.” It isn’t clear what Thoreau actually discovered in his two years at Walden. He was never one to be pinned down, and since he never married or had children to raise, his financial obligations beyond himself were few. He was a man of great contradictions: He hated work but at times loved it. He embraced solitude, but he also said how much he enjoyed the company of other people. Perhaps he was a man, who needed everything on his own terms, hardly an ideal trait for marriage and a family.
I don’t know what Thoreau ever really discovered at Walden or even in his life. He died relatively young, at age 44. He seemed to be someone who thought that life was more about searching than finding. He also believed that we would be far better off if we practiced the art of keen observation, both of the natural world and other human beings. Perhaps then we would make less mistakes. And to observe carefully, you don’t have to go far away from home. So, Thoreau did not wander far away. There are novelties all around us, he would say, even in the most ordinary environments. But we have to take the time to look. When Thoreau finally left his cabin the woods behind, he said, “At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.” And so, he was, and so are we.
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
THE TRINITY: IT’S ABOUT RELATIONSHIP by Rev. Sandra Olsen 6/7/2020
Matthew 28: 16-20
Sister Claire was an unforgettable character. A member of the sisters of St. Joseph with whom I became acquainted while doing clinical training at a psychiatric hospital, she was a brilliant woman with a sad biography. Her life had been books, and her dream was to teach in a catholic college or university. Sister Claire had entered the Order at age 18, after having spent all her life in convent schools, and by the time she was 26 she had earned a doctorate in English literature from Columbia University. She expected her career to blossom, and so did her professors, but her Order had other plans for Sister Claire. She was prideful, they told her, and so she was assigned to teach English to junior high school girls. Frustrated, bored, alienated, angry, she began to manifest serious psychological problems by her mid 40's, and suffered a full blown psychosis in her 50's. For five years she was hospitalized in a private psychiatric hospital in New York, and then was transferred to a state facility. And there she lived.
Claire spent most of her day in her room reading the pile of books another nun would faithfully bring to her, and if you tried to coax out of the room, she would first verbally assault you before resorting to a kick, punch or in my case, scratch. And so, she was often left alone to read her Jane Austen or Tolstoy. One day, quietly coming out of her room, she motioned to me with her finger to come in. “Sit here,” she said, pointing to a chair. Picking up her copy of Mary Gordon's novel, The Company of Women, she said, “This part is about Muriel, a housekeeper for one of the priests. Muriel is a bitter, spiteful, cynical woman, and this is what she says about herself. This is the part I want you to hear. And then she read:
"My death will be a relief to everyone. There is nothing more lonely than to look among live faces for the face of one who will live after oneself and mourn, the face that, after one's death, will be changed by grief, and to find contempt or an undifferentiated kindness. I wait for a face to meet my face; I wait for the singular gaze, the gaze of permanent choosing, the glance of absolute preferment. This I have always waited for and never found, have hungered for and never tasted. I wait here to be looked upon with favor, to be chosen above others, knowing I will die the first beloved of no living soul."
Claire looked up from her book and closed it. "At age 18,” she said, “I became the bride of Christ. Now I would give Christ away, if someone would only call me friend."
Friend: such a simple one syllable word it is, and yet it is essential to our identity as social and spiritual beings, so central in fact, we can die for want of it; yet in the Gospel of Matthew the word is not mentioned at all; in Mark, only once, in Luke, 10 times, and in John only 3, all in the three chapter farewell discourse from Jesus, when he moves from calling his disciples servants to calling them his friends.
Friendship was a very important concept in the ancient world---especially among the Greeks, particularly Aristotle, who thought long and hard about the various kinds of friendship. Christianity, on the other hand, did not expend much effort thinking about friendship. But it did think about relationship, which is, according to Christianity, what the divine identity is all about. And so over time the doctrine of the Trinity was developed. Matthew was written around the year 80, but even by the end of the first century, when John’s Gospel is believed to have been written, the Trinity was not yet fully developed. It would take the arguments of later councils in the third and fourth centuries to hammer out the doctrine, which although distinctive to Christianity, is one many Christians today ignore.
Oh, we know the words. Matthew, in what is called the Great Commission, shows Jesus commissioning his disciples to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. If you ask the average parishioner to explain what the Trinity means he or she will most likely say that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit and leave it at that. Someone might recall the popular hymn, Holy, Holy, Holy; God in three persons, blessed Trinity, but beyond that most Christians would not know what to say. Karl Rahner, perhaps the greatest Roman Catholic theologian of the 20th century, said that most Christians, if you told them the doctrine of the Trinity was being dropped, would hardly care, let alone notice.
But if something is true, at least according to good ole American pragmatism, it has to make a difference to someone at sometime in some place. So, what difference does the doctrine make? Consider what the doctrine says: the very essence of God’s identity is relationship. The very being of God is dynamic movement among these three “persons”. There is give and take, a mutuality of giving and receiving in love. We use the language of person hood, and of course, all human language limps and is inadequate to explain God, but this is what we have to use. It is the best we can do, or else we would be condemned to silence. Now maybe some people or religions prefer the silence. A recent convert to Buddhism noted that what she likes about the Buddha is how he is pictured: a solid figure, sitting calming and silently and wisely in a lotus position. That is not the Christian God. God is not silent. In the beginning was the Word.
So, if the very essence of God is dynamic relationship, what does that mean for us humans, made as we are in the image of God? We too are called to be in relationship, and indeed, that is what the church is supposed to be: a community of believers, who in relationship with one another share a vision of the new creation, which moves them forward. It is often true that churches can be more like a collection of solitary individuals, who happen to be in the same space on Sunday mornings. This is not what Jesus had in mind when he told his disciples, “Go, go out the world and make disciples of others, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” To make disciples and to baptize means to be in relationship.
And this is exactly what Sister Claire did not have. She did not have relationship, and she knew what a loss that was. She would give up Christ, she had said, to have someone call her friend. I visited her, because I had case studies to present, and as unappealing and aggressive as Claire sometimes was, she was interesting and incredibly smart. And so, in the beginning, I confess, that's what Claire was to me: interesting, smart material.
But something happened along the way. She and I actually developed a relationship, and one day, depressed and overcome by the immensity of the suffering I daily witnessed in that state facility, I blurted out to Claire. “I hate these cement walls; I hate the sound of locking doors and clanging keys. I hate the stare of vacant eyes, the sound of hideous laughter, the sight of broken lives. I walk around here repeating Isaiah's words, "Oh truly, you are a God who hides yourself!" Why in such desperate need do we only have a hidden God on whom to rely? Why?"
Claire didn't answer me. She reached out her hand---the same hand that had scratched my arm hard enough to draw blood, but instead of hurting me, she gently took my hand and put it against her cheek, upon which rivulets of tears now flowed. The two of us just sat there, saying nothing, but realizing that that in that moment we shared something significant---the same question that protested the silence that did not yield an answer. After this Claire considered me her spiritual confidant. And when I left the hospital she gave me her beloved copy of Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility with these words, written on the front page: “It’s All About Relationship.”
Indeed, it is. Sometimes we find ourselves thrown together in situations, which draw something out of us we did not necessarily know was there. Sometimes we choose our relationships, but at other times they are chosen for us. They are gifts, and we find them not so much when we seek, but when we are found, found by a God in whose image we are made, a God who calls us to live in relationship. We are living in difficult and trying days, when all kinds of relationships are threatened, when Americans are torn as they see ideals of justice, compassion and fairness denied. Who are we and whom do we desire to become? That is the question before us, put to us not only by our history, but also by our God in Jesus Christ.
Presenting our Gifts:
Let us now bring forth our offering, recognizing that the obligation to give is most profoundly the privilege to give.
Prayer of Dedication:
O God, accept these our gifts to our church as well as to the One Great Hour of Sharing, and teach us in wisdom to use them to the glory of your love. Amen
Prayers:
Oh God,
You give us people with whom to walk in our life journeys, and for this, in spite of all the discomfort and unease of our relationships, we are grateful. We ask that you open our ears and our eyes and our hearts that we might hear and see the gifts our relationships are. Teach us to be better friends to one another; teach us to befriend you in the neighbor and even in the enemy. Teach us that whenever we return good for evil, truth for lies, and forgiveness for hurt, we become friends to Christ, who would call us servants no longer, but friends.
Benediction:
Be still and know that God is.
Be still and know that God loves you.
Be still and know that even if you cannot find God, God will and can find you.
Matthew 28: 16-20
Sister Claire was an unforgettable character. A member of the sisters of St. Joseph with whom I became acquainted while doing clinical training at a psychiatric hospital, she was a brilliant woman with a sad biography. Her life had been books, and her dream was to teach in a catholic college or university. Sister Claire had entered the Order at age 18, after having spent all her life in convent schools, and by the time she was 26 she had earned a doctorate in English literature from Columbia University. She expected her career to blossom, and so did her professors, but her Order had other plans for Sister Claire. She was prideful, they told her, and so she was assigned to teach English to junior high school girls. Frustrated, bored, alienated, angry, she began to manifest serious psychological problems by her mid 40's, and suffered a full blown psychosis in her 50's. For five years she was hospitalized in a private psychiatric hospital in New York, and then was transferred to a state facility. And there she lived.
Claire spent most of her day in her room reading the pile of books another nun would faithfully bring to her, and if you tried to coax out of the room, she would first verbally assault you before resorting to a kick, punch or in my case, scratch. And so, she was often left alone to read her Jane Austen or Tolstoy. One day, quietly coming out of her room, she motioned to me with her finger to come in. “Sit here,” she said, pointing to a chair. Picking up her copy of Mary Gordon's novel, The Company of Women, she said, “This part is about Muriel, a housekeeper for one of the priests. Muriel is a bitter, spiteful, cynical woman, and this is what she says about herself. This is the part I want you to hear. And then she read:
"My death will be a relief to everyone. There is nothing more lonely than to look among live faces for the face of one who will live after oneself and mourn, the face that, after one's death, will be changed by grief, and to find contempt or an undifferentiated kindness. I wait for a face to meet my face; I wait for the singular gaze, the gaze of permanent choosing, the glance of absolute preferment. This I have always waited for and never found, have hungered for and never tasted. I wait here to be looked upon with favor, to be chosen above others, knowing I will die the first beloved of no living soul."
Claire looked up from her book and closed it. "At age 18,” she said, “I became the bride of Christ. Now I would give Christ away, if someone would only call me friend."
Friend: such a simple one syllable word it is, and yet it is essential to our identity as social and spiritual beings, so central in fact, we can die for want of it; yet in the Gospel of Matthew the word is not mentioned at all; in Mark, only once, in Luke, 10 times, and in John only 3, all in the three chapter farewell discourse from Jesus, when he moves from calling his disciples servants to calling them his friends.
Friendship was a very important concept in the ancient world---especially among the Greeks, particularly Aristotle, who thought long and hard about the various kinds of friendship. Christianity, on the other hand, did not expend much effort thinking about friendship. But it did think about relationship, which is, according to Christianity, what the divine identity is all about. And so over time the doctrine of the Trinity was developed. Matthew was written around the year 80, but even by the end of the first century, when John’s Gospel is believed to have been written, the Trinity was not yet fully developed. It would take the arguments of later councils in the third and fourth centuries to hammer out the doctrine, which although distinctive to Christianity, is one many Christians today ignore.
Oh, we know the words. Matthew, in what is called the Great Commission, shows Jesus commissioning his disciples to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. If you ask the average parishioner to explain what the Trinity means he or she will most likely say that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit and leave it at that. Someone might recall the popular hymn, Holy, Holy, Holy; God in three persons, blessed Trinity, but beyond that most Christians would not know what to say. Karl Rahner, perhaps the greatest Roman Catholic theologian of the 20th century, said that most Christians, if you told them the doctrine of the Trinity was being dropped, would hardly care, let alone notice.
But if something is true, at least according to good ole American pragmatism, it has to make a difference to someone at sometime in some place. So, what difference does the doctrine make? Consider what the doctrine says: the very essence of God’s identity is relationship. The very being of God is dynamic movement among these three “persons”. There is give and take, a mutuality of giving and receiving in love. We use the language of person hood, and of course, all human language limps and is inadequate to explain God, but this is what we have to use. It is the best we can do, or else we would be condemned to silence. Now maybe some people or religions prefer the silence. A recent convert to Buddhism noted that what she likes about the Buddha is how he is pictured: a solid figure, sitting calming and silently and wisely in a lotus position. That is not the Christian God. God is not silent. In the beginning was the Word.
So, if the very essence of God is dynamic relationship, what does that mean for us humans, made as we are in the image of God? We too are called to be in relationship, and indeed, that is what the church is supposed to be: a community of believers, who in relationship with one another share a vision of the new creation, which moves them forward. It is often true that churches can be more like a collection of solitary individuals, who happen to be in the same space on Sunday mornings. This is not what Jesus had in mind when he told his disciples, “Go, go out the world and make disciples of others, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” To make disciples and to baptize means to be in relationship.
And this is exactly what Sister Claire did not have. She did not have relationship, and she knew what a loss that was. She would give up Christ, she had said, to have someone call her friend. I visited her, because I had case studies to present, and as unappealing and aggressive as Claire sometimes was, she was interesting and incredibly smart. And so, in the beginning, I confess, that's what Claire was to me: interesting, smart material.
But something happened along the way. She and I actually developed a relationship, and one day, depressed and overcome by the immensity of the suffering I daily witnessed in that state facility, I blurted out to Claire. “I hate these cement walls; I hate the sound of locking doors and clanging keys. I hate the stare of vacant eyes, the sound of hideous laughter, the sight of broken lives. I walk around here repeating Isaiah's words, "Oh truly, you are a God who hides yourself!" Why in such desperate need do we only have a hidden God on whom to rely? Why?"
Claire didn't answer me. She reached out her hand---the same hand that had scratched my arm hard enough to draw blood, but instead of hurting me, she gently took my hand and put it against her cheek, upon which rivulets of tears now flowed. The two of us just sat there, saying nothing, but realizing that that in that moment we shared something significant---the same question that protested the silence that did not yield an answer. After this Claire considered me her spiritual confidant. And when I left the hospital she gave me her beloved copy of Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility with these words, written on the front page: “It’s All About Relationship.”
Indeed, it is. Sometimes we find ourselves thrown together in situations, which draw something out of us we did not necessarily know was there. Sometimes we choose our relationships, but at other times they are chosen for us. They are gifts, and we find them not so much when we seek, but when we are found, found by a God in whose image we are made, a God who calls us to live in relationship. We are living in difficult and trying days, when all kinds of relationships are threatened, when Americans are torn as they see ideals of justice, compassion and fairness denied. Who are we and whom do we desire to become? That is the question before us, put to us not only by our history, but also by our God in Jesus Christ.
Presenting our Gifts:
Let us now bring forth our offering, recognizing that the obligation to give is most profoundly the privilege to give.
Prayer of Dedication:
O God, accept these our gifts to our church as well as to the One Great Hour of Sharing, and teach us in wisdom to use them to the glory of your love. Amen
Prayers:
Oh God,
You give us people with whom to walk in our life journeys, and for this, in spite of all the discomfort and unease of our relationships, we are grateful. We ask that you open our ears and our eyes and our hearts that we might hear and see the gifts our relationships are. Teach us to be better friends to one another; teach us to befriend you in the neighbor and even in the enemy. Teach us that whenever we return good for evil, truth for lies, and forgiveness for hurt, we become friends to Christ, who would call us servants no longer, but friends.
Benediction:
Be still and know that God is.
Be still and know that God loves you.
Be still and know that even if you cannot find God, God will and can find you.
May 27, 2020
Dear Friends,
For the two thousand years plus of the Church’s history, it is been a supporter of the arts. Music, sculpture, stained glass and painting have been an important part of the Church’s story. During the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and beyond the Church was a great patron of the arts, commissioning artists and musicians to create and compose. Beauty, it was believed, was a pathway to the Divine. Of course, wealthy individuals also commissioned works for the church (sometimes) in the hopes that this would buy them a ticket into heaven, and the medieval guilds would do the same, hoping that people would notice their generosity and thus employ their skills for more mundane needs and tasks.
The Reformation brought some pretty substantial changes, when Protestant theologians and preachers began to fear that the beauty of the created objects became idolatrous, drawing the people away from God to the created object and its maker. During the Reformation bands of rampaging Protestants would sometimes smash the gorgeous stained glass and statues and rip paintings down from the walls, ceilings and even the altars in a radical show of disdain for the artistic beauty of the various objects in the churches. But still, beauty had its say, and though the visual arts suffered under Protestant hegemony, music did not. J.S. Bach was a devout and faithful Lutheran, whose music was often composed for worship.
Music certainly has a spiritual dimension, and one does not have to be a church goer to know and understand this. When the New York Times asked people what they missed during the lock down some noted the lack of concerts. One can listen to Bach, Beethoven and Mozart on a CD player and even with the most exquisite speakers, it is simply not the same as being in a live concert hall, watching the musicians, surrounded by an admiring audience. And now as the summer months approach, we are learning that more and more concerts are being cancelled. Tanglewood, the summer residence of the Boston Symphony, has cancelled its concerts for the summer as has the Norfolk Music Festival in Norfolk, CT, the summer residence of the Yale School of Music. All across the country and the world, music festivals and concerts are saying, No Go, leaving people discouraged and even depressed. It is a major loss, and people are mourning.
So, it is with interest that I read about concerts being played in German airports, gardens and museums. They are rather “strange affairs,” because there is usually only one musician and one person in the audience, though some performances have allowed more people to attend---like four! People buy tickets online and then show up for a what is usually a very short performance. There is to be no talking between the musician and the audience, but they do sometimes gaze into each other’s eyes. One concert goer said he had never felt such a deep connection between himself and the musician. And the musician, who was a cellist, agreed.
“I cannot wait,” he said, “to return to the large concert hall and play complicated, loud works in front of one or two thousand people. But the emotions with these small concerts are completely different,” he admitted. “I connected with people in the airport in a way I never would have imagined is possible. Maybe we should continue this even when life and concerts return to normal.”
There is certainly something deeply spiritual about how music works on the brain. Music can offer uplift and inspiration. Many would see it as a civilizing force. And yet, we should recall that in the concentration camps during World War ll, populated as they were with many talented and even famous musicians, orchestras were formed and played some of the most hauntingly beautiful music ever composed. And the German officers would listen to the music and weep because its beauty stirred the soul. And yet they were in the business of murdering people! Clearly, there was some kind of deep disconnect. How can we possibly understand such phenomena? Indeed, we human beings are complicated creatures, and music (like all the arts) enter into our complications. And so, while beauty can indeed be a pathway, pointing toward God, there is no guarantee of the direction a person will take. We hope that the arts will civilize us, and when they fail to do so, the fault lies not in the art but in ourselves and in the conditions into which we force other people to live.
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
Dear Friends,
For the two thousand years plus of the Church’s history, it is been a supporter of the arts. Music, sculpture, stained glass and painting have been an important part of the Church’s story. During the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and beyond the Church was a great patron of the arts, commissioning artists and musicians to create and compose. Beauty, it was believed, was a pathway to the Divine. Of course, wealthy individuals also commissioned works for the church (sometimes) in the hopes that this would buy them a ticket into heaven, and the medieval guilds would do the same, hoping that people would notice their generosity and thus employ their skills for more mundane needs and tasks.
The Reformation brought some pretty substantial changes, when Protestant theologians and preachers began to fear that the beauty of the created objects became idolatrous, drawing the people away from God to the created object and its maker. During the Reformation bands of rampaging Protestants would sometimes smash the gorgeous stained glass and statues and rip paintings down from the walls, ceilings and even the altars in a radical show of disdain for the artistic beauty of the various objects in the churches. But still, beauty had its say, and though the visual arts suffered under Protestant hegemony, music did not. J.S. Bach was a devout and faithful Lutheran, whose music was often composed for worship.
Music certainly has a spiritual dimension, and one does not have to be a church goer to know and understand this. When the New York Times asked people what they missed during the lock down some noted the lack of concerts. One can listen to Bach, Beethoven and Mozart on a CD player and even with the most exquisite speakers, it is simply not the same as being in a live concert hall, watching the musicians, surrounded by an admiring audience. And now as the summer months approach, we are learning that more and more concerts are being cancelled. Tanglewood, the summer residence of the Boston Symphony, has cancelled its concerts for the summer as has the Norfolk Music Festival in Norfolk, CT, the summer residence of the Yale School of Music. All across the country and the world, music festivals and concerts are saying, No Go, leaving people discouraged and even depressed. It is a major loss, and people are mourning.
So, it is with interest that I read about concerts being played in German airports, gardens and museums. They are rather “strange affairs,” because there is usually only one musician and one person in the audience, though some performances have allowed more people to attend---like four! People buy tickets online and then show up for a what is usually a very short performance. There is to be no talking between the musician and the audience, but they do sometimes gaze into each other’s eyes. One concert goer said he had never felt such a deep connection between himself and the musician. And the musician, who was a cellist, agreed.
“I cannot wait,” he said, “to return to the large concert hall and play complicated, loud works in front of one or two thousand people. But the emotions with these small concerts are completely different,” he admitted. “I connected with people in the airport in a way I never would have imagined is possible. Maybe we should continue this even when life and concerts return to normal.”
There is certainly something deeply spiritual about how music works on the brain. Music can offer uplift and inspiration. Many would see it as a civilizing force. And yet, we should recall that in the concentration camps during World War ll, populated as they were with many talented and even famous musicians, orchestras were formed and played some of the most hauntingly beautiful music ever composed. And the German officers would listen to the music and weep because its beauty stirred the soul. And yet they were in the business of murdering people! Clearly, there was some kind of deep disconnect. How can we possibly understand such phenomena? Indeed, we human beings are complicated creatures, and music (like all the arts) enter into our complications. And so, while beauty can indeed be a pathway, pointing toward God, there is no guarantee of the direction a person will take. We hope that the arts will civilize us, and when they fail to do so, the fault lies not in the art but in ourselves and in the conditions into which we force other people to live.
Yours in Christ,
Sandra
WHEN THE SPIRIT BLOWS by Rev. Sandra L. Olsen 5/31/2020
Galatians 5: 22-26
Acts 2: 1-21
On May 27, 1999 Darrell Scott, the father of Rachel Scott, one of the victims of the Columbine High School shooting, spoke before a small subcommittee of House members, convened in an office building. Eight other people offered testimony, including a mother, whose son, like Rachel, died that awful morning, now more than 20 years ago. While that mother pleaded for stricter gun control laws, this was not Darrell Scott’s intention. It wasn’t that he opposed such laws, but he had something else he wanted to say. Here, in part, are his words.
Since the dawn of creation there has been both good and evil in the hearts of men and women. We all contain the seeds of kindness or the seeds of violence. I am here today to declare that Columbine was not just a tragedy; it was a spiritual event that should be forcing us to look at where the real blame lies. Men and women are three part beings. We all consist of body, mind and spirit. When we refuse to acknowledge a third part of our make-up, we create a void that allows evil, prejudice and hatred to rush in and wreak havoc. …. The real villain lies within our own hearts. We do not need more religion. We do not need more gaudy television evangelists spewing out verbal religious garbage. We do not need more million dollar church buildings built while people with basic needs are being ignored. We do need a change of heart and a humble acknowledgment that this nation was founded on the principle of simple trust in God!
We have all heard the distinction made between spiritual and religious. How many times have we heard people say, I am spiritual, but not religious as a way of explaining their disinterest in church? Darrell Scott inherently made the distinction when he said it is not more religion we need. But we do need something, and our present culture apparently cannot decide on what that something is, or how to go about getting and expressing it.
Now I am a Baby Boomer, which means I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s, and I attended, I am convinced, one of the most progressive elementary schools in the nation, Windermere Boulevard Elementary School in Eggertsville, New York, a suburb of Buffalo. Its physical structure was impressive, boasting a swimming pool, where swimming was taught, beginning in the third grade, a gymnasium, gorgeous art and music rooms. Elaborate musicals and plays were performed every year, and the Windermere World was published annually, a collection of art work, stories, poems, all written or drawn by students from K through the 6th grade. No homework was allowed until the 4th grade, because the principal, Arthur York, fervently believed it was imperative for children to play after school.
But there was something else that the school did, which really was spiritual. Each month the principal chose a virtue, like honesty, courage, compassion, intelligence, creativity and yes, even faith and an historical figure, who instantiated that virtue. He introduced the virtue and the character over the loud speaker at the beginning of the month, and then it was the teacher’s job to come up with age appropriate lessons on this character and his or her virtue. In this way I learned about Dr. Tom Dooley, a man of faith, who as a devout Roman Catholic and a medical doctor, went to Laos to establish a hospital and clinic there. Names like Albert Schweitzer, Eleanor Roosevelt, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Michelangelo, Jackie Robinson were all held up as people of virtue. They were not presented as perfect human beings; but we were taught to see a particular virtue in them. And those virtues, we were told, mattered deeply, adding to the depth and meaning of life.
Virtues like honesty, creativity, compassion, joy, self-control are spiritual values, not attached to any particular religion, though all the world’s religions do embrace such virtues. And so, do atheists and agnostics. These are virtues worth teaching and proclaiming, and they are deeply spiritual without being overtly religious. Of course, one’s particular religious perspective enters into these virtues, and if one is a Christian, for example, it is not theologically possible to deny the centrality of compassion and generosity, and if you do, there is something deeply skewed about your Christian faith.
I remember, when I was in seminary, and learned that John Calvin, a genius as a theologian with a photographic memory, burned Miguel Servetus at the stake for denying the Trinity.
Servetus was a Unitarian, who begged to be beheaded rather than burned. But no, the City of Geneva with Calvin’s blessing burned the man to death. As much as I intellectually admire Calvin, I have to conclude that there was something so out of sync, something so deeply and sinfully skewed in his heart and spirit that would permit him to preside over such a horror. The Spirit blows where it wills, but where was it blowing in John Calvin? If he honestly believed that this is what Jesus Christ would have him do, there was something deeply twisted in his faith. And such is the tragedy of the human condition. We can be great in one area and pathetically small and misshapen in another.
We are spiritual beings, and there are many things beyond religion, which can nurture the spirit, including art, music, literature, movies, wherever the good, the true and the beautiful find expression. “The Spirit blows where it will and it often wills to blow beyond the boundaries of the religious world. And for this we should be grateful. But still the primary job of the church is to nurture our spirits that we might live full and abundant lives. As Christians we follow certain practices, like prayer, meditation, the singing of hymns, the reading and pondering of scripture, reflection on the life, death and destiny of Jesus Christ, none of which we should expect the secular world to embrace. But no matter how we in this culture might define a full and abundant life, we should be able to agree that certain behaviors and attitudes are destructive of our spirits. Cruelty, self-centeredness, disregard for our natural world, a contempt for goodness, decency and truth, ---this will always lead away from a humane and a spiritually rich life. We all do not agree that prayer should be in our classrooms, but why cannot we all agree that civility should rule, and cruel and disrespectful words and behavior should neither be modeled nor tolerated. Is it that we cannot even agree on what civility and cruelty are? Are our voices nothing more than a cacophony of sound, a confusion of noise with little understanding of what we human beings require to be truly human?
Some ago there was this chalking problem at Wesleyan University, where my husband teaches. During the night some students were going around campus chalking all kinds of inappropriate things, including pornographic words and images. They would be washed away by the janitorial staff in the morning but would reappear during the night. The President was in. my opinion rightly outraged and sent out an all campus email saying such behavior was unacceptable and would not be tolerated. Suspension might result, he suggested. Well, believe it or not, some faculty members defended the students’ “free speech.” The faculty meeting was quite lively, my husband said, with some defending free speech, while others insisted it had nothing to do with free speech, because free speech always involves the willingness to take responsibility for what is said. Well, finally a faculty member, annoyed at the bickering, stood up and said, “Look, I am a parent of two college age kids, and if I discovered that either of them was behaving this way, I would immediately tell them in no uncertain terms that their behavior is unacceptable and must stop. This is a university, whose mission is to pursue knowledge and truth in a rational, disciplined and civilized way. Such behavior on the part of our students does not serve the mission. In fact, it insults it.”
So, what does all this have to do with today, with Pentecost, when we remember and celebrate the sending of the Spirit? The Spirit gave birth to the church, just as the Spirit gives life and hope and renewal, wherever it blows. And it still blows---where it wills----in the church, outside the church, beyond the church. Yes, it is true that over the centuries the church’s influence has lessened. In our lifetime our denomination has gone from mainline to sideline. But no matter our size or our influence the church still has something significant to say, something significant to teach and yes, something significant to model. The Spirit comes and it blows where it wills, leaving it its wake fruits, virtues, which are meant for all people: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. When is the last time you have heard a politician, obsessing about the coming election, or a school administrator, obsessing about test scores, talk about the development of such virtues? And if they fail to do so, should not we, as the church, as the body, mind and spirit of Jesus Christ, help to raise the conservation to a new and different level?
The church does not make us good, but it can and should help us to want to be good---even if we so often fail. And we do fail, both individually and collectively, but the church as the body of Christ, the whole body, made up of various members, is still a place which holds fast to the vision of people struggling together to be faithful to a God who desires us not only to be faithful but also to be virtuous.
Galatians 5: 22-26
Acts 2: 1-21
On May 27, 1999 Darrell Scott, the father of Rachel Scott, one of the victims of the Columbine High School shooting, spoke before a small subcommittee of House members, convened in an office building. Eight other people offered testimony, including a mother, whose son, like Rachel, died that awful morning, now more than 20 years ago. While that mother pleaded for stricter gun control laws, this was not Darrell Scott’s intention. It wasn’t that he opposed such laws, but he had something else he wanted to say. Here, in part, are his words.
Since the dawn of creation there has been both good and evil in the hearts of men and women. We all contain the seeds of kindness or the seeds of violence. I am here today to declare that Columbine was not just a tragedy; it was a spiritual event that should be forcing us to look at where the real blame lies. Men and women are three part beings. We all consist of body, mind and spirit. When we refuse to acknowledge a third part of our make-up, we create a void that allows evil, prejudice and hatred to rush in and wreak havoc. …. The real villain lies within our own hearts. We do not need more religion. We do not need more gaudy television evangelists spewing out verbal religious garbage. We do not need more million dollar church buildings built while people with basic needs are being ignored. We do need a change of heart and a humble acknowledgment that this nation was founded on the principle of simple trust in God!
We have all heard the distinction made between spiritual and religious. How many times have we heard people say, I am spiritual, but not religious as a way of explaining their disinterest in church? Darrell Scott inherently made the distinction when he said it is not more religion we need. But we do need something, and our present culture apparently cannot decide on what that something is, or how to go about getting and expressing it.
Now I am a Baby Boomer, which means I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s, and I attended, I am convinced, one of the most progressive elementary schools in the nation, Windermere Boulevard Elementary School in Eggertsville, New York, a suburb of Buffalo. Its physical structure was impressive, boasting a swimming pool, where swimming was taught, beginning in the third grade, a gymnasium, gorgeous art and music rooms. Elaborate musicals and plays were performed every year, and the Windermere World was published annually, a collection of art work, stories, poems, all written or drawn by students from K through the 6th grade. No homework was allowed until the 4th grade, because the principal, Arthur York, fervently believed it was imperative for children to play after school.
But there was something else that the school did, which really was spiritual. Each month the principal chose a virtue, like honesty, courage, compassion, intelligence, creativity and yes, even faith and an historical figure, who instantiated that virtue. He introduced the virtue and the character over the loud speaker at the beginning of the month, and then it was the teacher’s job to come up with age appropriate lessons on this character and his or her virtue. In this way I learned about Dr. Tom Dooley, a man of faith, who as a devout Roman Catholic and a medical doctor, went to Laos to establish a hospital and clinic there. Names like Albert Schweitzer, Eleanor Roosevelt, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Michelangelo, Jackie Robinson were all held up as people of virtue. They were not presented as perfect human beings; but we were taught to see a particular virtue in them. And those virtues, we were told, mattered deeply, adding to the depth and meaning of life.
Virtues like honesty, creativity, compassion, joy, self-control are spiritual values, not attached to any particular religion, though all the world’s religions do embrace such virtues. And so, do atheists and agnostics. These are virtues worth teaching and proclaiming, and they are deeply spiritual without being overtly religious. Of course, one’s particular religious perspective enters into these virtues, and if one is a Christian, for example, it is not theologically possible to deny the centrality of compassion and generosity, and if you do, there is something deeply skewed about your Christian faith.
I remember, when I was in seminary, and learned that John Calvin, a genius as a theologian with a photographic memory, burned Miguel Servetus at the stake for denying the Trinity.
Servetus was a Unitarian, who begged to be beheaded rather than burned. But no, the City of Geneva with Calvin’s blessing burned the man to death. As much as I intellectually admire Calvin, I have to conclude that there was something so out of sync, something so deeply and sinfully skewed in his heart and spirit that would permit him to preside over such a horror. The Spirit blows where it wills, but where was it blowing in John Calvin? If he honestly believed that this is what Jesus Christ would have him do, there was something deeply twisted in his faith. And such is the tragedy of the human condition. We can be great in one area and pathetically small and misshapen in another.
We are spiritual beings, and there are many things beyond religion, which can nurture the spirit, including art, music, literature, movies, wherever the good, the true and the beautiful find expression. “The Spirit blows where it will and it often wills to blow beyond the boundaries of the religious world. And for this we should be grateful. But still the primary job of the church is to nurture our spirits that we might live full and abundant lives. As Christians we follow certain practices, like prayer, meditation, the singing of hymns, the reading and pondering of scripture, reflection on the life, death and destiny of Jesus Christ, none of which we should expect the secular world to embrace. But no matter how we in this culture might define a full and abundant life, we should be able to agree that certain behaviors and attitudes are destructive of our spirits. Cruelty, self-centeredness, disregard for our natural world, a contempt for goodness, decency and truth, ---this will always lead away from a humane and a spiritually rich life. We all do not agree that prayer should be in our classrooms, but why cannot we all agree that civility should rule, and cruel and disrespectful words and behavior should neither be modeled nor tolerated. Is it that we cannot even agree on what civility and cruelty are? Are our voices nothing more than a cacophony of sound, a confusion of noise with little understanding of what we human beings require to be truly human?
Some ago there was this chalking problem at Wesleyan University, where my husband teaches. During the night some students were going around campus chalking all kinds of inappropriate things, including pornographic words and images. They would be washed away by the janitorial staff in the morning but would reappear during the night. The President was in. my opinion rightly outraged and sent out an all campus email saying such behavior was unacceptable and would not be tolerated. Suspension might result, he suggested. Well, believe it or not, some faculty members defended the students’ “free speech.” The faculty meeting was quite lively, my husband said, with some defending free speech, while others insisted it had nothing to do with free speech, because free speech always involves the willingness to take responsibility for what is said. Well, finally a faculty member, annoyed at the bickering, stood up and said, “Look, I am a parent of two college age kids, and if I discovered that either of them was behaving this way, I would immediately tell them in no uncertain terms that their behavior is unacceptable and must stop. This is a university, whose mission is to pursue knowledge and truth in a rational, disciplined and civilized way. Such behavior on the part of our students does not serve the mission. In fact, it insults it.”
So, what does all this have to do with today, with Pentecost, when we remember and celebrate the sending of the Spirit? The Spirit gave birth to the church, just as the Spirit gives life and hope and renewal, wherever it blows. And it still blows---where it wills----in the church, outside the church, beyond the church. Yes, it is true that over the centuries the church’s influence has lessened. In our lifetime our denomination has gone from mainline to sideline. But no matter our size or our influence the church still has something significant to say, something significant to teach and yes, something significant to model. The Spirit comes and it blows where it wills, leaving it its wake fruits, virtues, which are meant for all people: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. When is the last time you have heard a politician, obsessing about the coming election, or a school administrator, obsessing about test scores, talk about the development of such virtues? And if they fail to do so, should not we, as the church, as the body, mind and spirit of Jesus Christ, help to raise the conservation to a new and different level?
The church does not make us good, but it can and should help us to want to be good---even if we so often fail. And we do fail, both individually and collectively, but the church as the body of Christ, the whole body, made up of various members, is still a place which holds fast to the vision of people struggling together to be faithful to a God who desires us not only to be faithful but also to be virtuous.
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May 15, 2020
Dear Friends,
Carmella Parry is 94 years old, and she lives alone in a fourth floor walk up studio apartment in Gramercy Park, New York. She has lived there since age 24, when she moved in with her husband, who died in 1987. Though she has two sisters, living just a few blocks away, she rarely gets to see them, because they all have a hard time climbing up and down stairs. But she does speak to them every day on the phone.
Carmella is one of the many New York residents, who receive meals through Citymeals, a program that supplements the regular New York food delivery system. Citymeals delivers meals to the elderly even on Sundays and holidays, something that programs like Meals on Wheels do not do. And there is something else that Citymeals delivers—poetry. In each box of food, there is a poetry card by a number of different poets, including Langston Hughes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman. The idea for this came from Kimiko Hahn, a poet and a professor at Queens College, who came across elementary school students making cards to put in Meals on Wheels food boxes. Ms. Hahn was a past President of the Poetry Society of America, and she thought it was a grand idea to uplift seniors by giving them poetry to read. Citymeals thought the idea grand too, and so it all began. The idea is to nourish both the body and the soul.
The Poetry Society of America had been placing poetry in New York City’s subway cars since 1992, and over the years the idea has spread to 30 other American cities, including Atlanta, Chicago, Salt Lake City. Both Citymeals and the Poetry Society of America believe that poetry is not something for the elite; poetry is for everyone, helping them to get in touch with deep feelings, thoughts and emotions, too often denied or ignored. One of the included poem, Luck, written by Langston Hughes, goes like this:
Sometimes a crumb falls
From the tables of joy.
Sometimes a bone is flung
To some people
Love is given
To others
Only heaven.
Carmella Parry is grateful for the poetry, and she carefully tapes the poem cards to her refrigerator. On another sheet of paper, she wrote in beautiful cursive a line from one of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poems, “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know when it will be too late.” She wrote it down because she thought it was too important to forget, and she did not want that particular line to be lost in the rest of the poem. So, there it sits on her refrigerator.
There is more to the story, however. The former U.S. poet laureate, Billy Collins, read an article about Poems on Wheels, and he was so touched by Ms. Parry that he sent her a copy of his most recent book, The Rain in Portugal. He thought her life of confinement now mirrors what so many other people in New York and elsewhere are experiencing. He also noted that the great English poet, William Wordsworth, had hoped and written that our personal lives should and would be marked by “little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.” Collins said, “The unremembered ingredient is the key, because the idea is to forget your good deeds, and that is done when your kind acts come so naturally you do not remember them.”
Blessings,
Sandra
Dear Friends,
Carmella Parry is 94 years old, and she lives alone in a fourth floor walk up studio apartment in Gramercy Park, New York. She has lived there since age 24, when she moved in with her husband, who died in 1987. Though she has two sisters, living just a few blocks away, she rarely gets to see them, because they all have a hard time climbing up and down stairs. But she does speak to them every day on the phone.
Carmella is one of the many New York residents, who receive meals through Citymeals, a program that supplements the regular New York food delivery system. Citymeals delivers meals to the elderly even on Sundays and holidays, something that programs like Meals on Wheels do not do. And there is something else that Citymeals delivers—poetry. In each box of food, there is a poetry card by a number of different poets, including Langston Hughes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman. The idea for this came from Kimiko Hahn, a poet and a professor at Queens College, who came across elementary school students making cards to put in Meals on Wheels food boxes. Ms. Hahn was a past President of the Poetry Society of America, and she thought it was a grand idea to uplift seniors by giving them poetry to read. Citymeals thought the idea grand too, and so it all began. The idea is to nourish both the body and the soul.
The Poetry Society of America had been placing poetry in New York City’s subway cars since 1992, and over the years the idea has spread to 30 other American cities, including Atlanta, Chicago, Salt Lake City. Both Citymeals and the Poetry Society of America believe that poetry is not something for the elite; poetry is for everyone, helping them to get in touch with deep feelings, thoughts and emotions, too often denied or ignored. One of the included poem, Luck, written by Langston Hughes, goes like this:
Sometimes a crumb falls
From the tables of joy.
Sometimes a bone is flung
To some people
Love is given
To others
Only heaven.
Carmella Parry is grateful for the poetry, and she carefully tapes the poem cards to her refrigerator. On another sheet of paper, she wrote in beautiful cursive a line from one of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poems, “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know when it will be too late.” She wrote it down because she thought it was too important to forget, and she did not want that particular line to be lost in the rest of the poem. So, there it sits on her refrigerator.
There is more to the story, however. The former U.S. poet laureate, Billy Collins, read an article about Poems on Wheels, and he was so touched by Ms. Parry that he sent her a copy of his most recent book, The Rain in Portugal. He thought her life of confinement now mirrors what so many other people in New York and elsewhere are experiencing. He also noted that the great English poet, William Wordsworth, had hoped and written that our personal lives should and would be marked by “little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.” Collins said, “The unremembered ingredient is the key, because the idea is to forget your good deeds, and that is done when your kind acts come so naturally you do not remember them.”
Blessings,
Sandra
SAYING GOOD-BYE by: Rev. Sandra L. Olsen 5/17/2020
John 14: 15-21
I once read somewhere that one of the most important tasks in human life is learning to say goodbye. We have to learn to separate ourselves from so many people, places and things, and it is a diminished personality, who never learns how to say good-bye. You have heard me say before that the bible is a lens through which we can view the human condition. We interpret scripture that we might see and find the truth to help us live lives that are full and abundant. And learning how to say good-bye, which is really a learning to let go, is part of living a full and abundant life.
Our scripture reading from the Gospel of John is a continuation of Jesus’ farewell discourse to his disciples. It’s right before he goes to Jerusalem where he will die, and as I mentioned in the introduction, Jesus takes three chapters to say goodbye. He does a lot of teaching here; this is his final lecture or sermon to his disciples. And so today I want you to consider not only how Jesus said goodbye, but also how you say good bye.
This is an issue that has become quite critical in our present circumstances, because so many of the hospitalized persons with Covid-19 have died with no family member or friend with them. Doctors and nurses have said that one of the hardest parts of their jobs has been holding up cell phones and tablets, so loved ones could say good bye, telling the dying person how much she or he is loved. Of course, I have also read that sometimes staff feel badly when the person on the other end is in denial, and is not ready to let go, and so rather than saying good-bye, tells the dying person, “Fight, fight, fight. We need you. Please don’t die.”
Think back, if you can, to the first significant good bye in your life. I know someone who is now 21, whose mother left the family when she was 11 and her sister was 8. Her mother had fallen in love with someone online and was flying halfway around the world to be with him. She had told her children months before that she would be leaving, divorcing their father with whom they would continue to live. “I remember,” the young woman recently told me, “when she first told us she would be leaving, but that did not make the same impression as when she actually left, when the van came to the house to pick her up to take her to the airport. I remember my mother kissing me and telling me this was not really a good-bye. “I will call you every week,” she insisted. I will still be your mother, she promised, but that promise meant nothing to me. I knew that with her leaving our relationship would never be the same again. I knew that, and I was only 11, and I remember thinking, “How can you not know what I know, when I am only a child and you are supposed to be an adult?”
Perhaps deep down inside the mother did know, but just could not bear to admit it to herself, and indeed, that is why sometimes people refuse to say good-bye. They refuse to admit the truth to themselves. Ten years have passed since that mother left, and though she has dutifully called over those years, she has not been functioning as a mother---not doing the things that mothers normally do, and so in time the daughter began to call her mother by her first name rather than mom.
Sometimes we prefer to live with the myth that our refusal to acknowledge something means that it does not really have to come to pass. It is one way we try to exercise control in situations where we feel we have no real control to speak of. In my last church there was this man, dying of congestive heart failure in the hospital, and when his wife bent down to kiss him, she said. “Good night, my darling.” “You mean goodbye, don’t you?” he whispered. “No”, she insisted. “I mean good night”. She was not ready to say goodbye, though he was. He died early the next morning before she arrived at the hospital, and she deeply regretted that she had not said goodbye.
There are many different kinds of good-byes, and our culture, like all cultures, has evolved rituals to bring situations to closure. Graduations, weddings, funerals, and memorial services are all ways we say good-bye, while moving toward a new beginning. They are acknowledgements that life will now be lived a bit differently from how it was lived before. Last March as the virus began to take hold of the country and colleges and universities were shutting down and sending students home, I happened to be walking across the Wesleyan campus, where two young women were crying and embracing. Clearly, they were saying good-bye. I heard one of them say through her sobs, “I can’t believe it’s all over,” she said. We have been best friends for these past four years, and now we won’t see each other every day. Life is going to be so different, and I don’t want it to be.”
And that is really the question in many good byes, isn’t it? How will we manage the change? How will life be? Oh, when our good byes are finished sentences; when we are really done and ready to move on, a good bye feels like a completion. But so often that is not the case. Sometimes our good byes are retreats, like some lines in an Emily Dickinson poem:
We learn in the retreating
How vast a One
Was recently among us
A perished sun.
Not all our perished suns are people. Sometimes we say goodbye to hopes and dreams, to youth, vitality and energy, and finally even to life itself. We have all been beaten by certain circumstances. There are among us failed marriages, broken relationships with siblings or children, which we may never heal. Some of us have spent large expanses of our life living toward a dream that we may have to confess may never be actualized. It hurts to put dreams away, and yet sometimes that is what we must do. I am not sure from where the wisdom comes to know when to retreat or give up, but sometimes it comes, maybe even in spite of ourselves. We reach limits of strength and stamina. We retreat, not because our goal is unworthy, but because we no longer know how to work towards its birth. And when we close that door, when we stammer the words good-bye, we do so with a haunting feeling that yes, a sun indeed has perished from our lives. And yet, as Emily Dickinson said, “We learn in the retreating.”
I remember years ago, when I worked as a chaplain in a hospital, there was this woman, who could not maintain a pregnancy. Over and over again, she miscarried, and each loss was more devastating than the last. Finally, she said, "No more.” This one young doctor, greatly impressed by his training in the most prestigious medical schools and hospitals in the country, was convinced that he could help her. "It may take a few more tries," he said, "but I know I can get your body to work.” The husband supported the doctor, but the wife was adamant. "No,” she said. “It's over. I am burying the dream of being a biological mother." The doctor wanted me to talk to her, to convince her to try again. I refused, recalling Emily Dickinson's line: We learn in the retreating. It was not the time to try to resurrect what was becoming for her a dead dream. We learn in the retreating.
And indeed, Jesus’ disciples had to learn in the retreating. Consider what it was they had once expected: a king, not unlike David, who united the northern and southern kingdoms and became a conquering hero. In Jesus’ day Rome had its boot on the Jews’ necks, and they wanted it off. They wanted what they once had---that dream of being a sovereign and powerful nation. Isn’t this what the Messiah was supposed to accomplish? And then along came Jesus, who overturned the conventional expectations.
He did not lead the way they thought he should lead. He taught them strange things about the first being last and the last being first. And now in this protracted farewell discourse, he is saying goodbye to what they had known, to what had been so familiar, if not always comfortable. He would be leaving them, but they would not be abandoned; they would not be left as orphans. They would not have him as they once did, but he would ask God to send them the Spirit. Did they understand? No; they were grief stricken and afraid, because he was leaving them, and they could not yet see or imagine what would lie ahead. They would have to trust that there would be a new beginning, waiting for them. And so, do we all have to trust. We trust in a future we cannot see, a future that God promises will not leave us orphaned. There is always change; nothing stays the same. People come into our lives and people go out of our lives, but God goes with us and is with us through all that coming and going, through all that retreating. On this we can rely.
John 14: 15-21
I once read somewhere that one of the most important tasks in human life is learning to say goodbye. We have to learn to separate ourselves from so many people, places and things, and it is a diminished personality, who never learns how to say good-bye. You have heard me say before that the bible is a lens through which we can view the human condition. We interpret scripture that we might see and find the truth to help us live lives that are full and abundant. And learning how to say good-bye, which is really a learning to let go, is part of living a full and abundant life.
Our scripture reading from the Gospel of John is a continuation of Jesus’ farewell discourse to his disciples. It’s right before he goes to Jerusalem where he will die, and as I mentioned in the introduction, Jesus takes three chapters to say goodbye. He does a lot of teaching here; this is his final lecture or sermon to his disciples. And so today I want you to consider not only how Jesus said goodbye, but also how you say good bye.
This is an issue that has become quite critical in our present circumstances, because so many of the hospitalized persons with Covid-19 have died with no family member or friend with them. Doctors and nurses have said that one of the hardest parts of their jobs has been holding up cell phones and tablets, so loved ones could say good bye, telling the dying person how much she or he is loved. Of course, I have also read that sometimes staff feel badly when the person on the other end is in denial, and is not ready to let go, and so rather than saying good-bye, tells the dying person, “Fight, fight, fight. We need you. Please don’t die.”
Think back, if you can, to the first significant good bye in your life. I know someone who is now 21, whose mother left the family when she was 11 and her sister was 8. Her mother had fallen in love with someone online and was flying halfway around the world to be with him. She had told her children months before that she would be leaving, divorcing their father with whom they would continue to live. “I remember,” the young woman recently told me, “when she first told us she would be leaving, but that did not make the same impression as when she actually left, when the van came to the house to pick her up to take her to the airport. I remember my mother kissing me and telling me this was not really a good-bye. “I will call you every week,” she insisted. I will still be your mother, she promised, but that promise meant nothing to me. I knew that with her leaving our relationship would never be the same again. I knew that, and I was only 11, and I remember thinking, “How can you not know what I know, when I am only a child and you are supposed to be an adult?”
Perhaps deep down inside the mother did know, but just could not bear to admit it to herself, and indeed, that is why sometimes people refuse to say good-bye. They refuse to admit the truth to themselves. Ten years have passed since that mother left, and though she has dutifully called over those years, she has not been functioning as a mother---not doing the things that mothers normally do, and so in time the daughter began to call her mother by her first name rather than mom.
Sometimes we prefer to live with the myth that our refusal to acknowledge something means that it does not really have to come to pass. It is one way we try to exercise control in situations where we feel we have no real control to speak of. In my last church there was this man, dying of congestive heart failure in the hospital, and when his wife bent down to kiss him, she said. “Good night, my darling.” “You mean goodbye, don’t you?” he whispered. “No”, she insisted. “I mean good night”. She was not ready to say goodbye, though he was. He died early the next morning before she arrived at the hospital, and she deeply regretted that she had not said goodbye.
There are many different kinds of good-byes, and our culture, like all cultures, has evolved rituals to bring situations to closure. Graduations, weddings, funerals, and memorial services are all ways we say good-bye, while moving toward a new beginning. They are acknowledgements that life will now be lived a bit differently from how it was lived before. Last March as the virus began to take hold of the country and colleges and universities were shutting down and sending students home, I happened to be walking across the Wesleyan campus, where two young women were crying and embracing. Clearly, they were saying good-bye. I heard one of them say through her sobs, “I can’t believe it’s all over,” she said. We have been best friends for these past four years, and now we won’t see each other every day. Life is going to be so different, and I don’t want it to be.”
And that is really the question in many good byes, isn’t it? How will we manage the change? How will life be? Oh, when our good byes are finished sentences; when we are really done and ready to move on, a good bye feels like a completion. But so often that is not the case. Sometimes our good byes are retreats, like some lines in an Emily Dickinson poem:
We learn in the retreating
How vast a One
Was recently among us
A perished sun.
Not all our perished suns are people. Sometimes we say goodbye to hopes and dreams, to youth, vitality and energy, and finally even to life itself. We have all been beaten by certain circumstances. There are among us failed marriages, broken relationships with siblings or children, which we may never heal. Some of us have spent large expanses of our life living toward a dream that we may have to confess may never be actualized. It hurts to put dreams away, and yet sometimes that is what we must do. I am not sure from where the wisdom comes to know when to retreat or give up, but sometimes it comes, maybe even in spite of ourselves. We reach limits of strength and stamina. We retreat, not because our goal is unworthy, but because we no longer know how to work towards its birth. And when we close that door, when we stammer the words good-bye, we do so with a haunting feeling that yes, a sun indeed has perished from our lives. And yet, as Emily Dickinson said, “We learn in the retreating.”
I remember years ago, when I worked as a chaplain in a hospital, there was this woman, who could not maintain a pregnancy. Over and over again, she miscarried, and each loss was more devastating than the last. Finally, she said, "No more.” This one young doctor, greatly impressed by his training in the most prestigious medical schools and hospitals in the country, was convinced that he could help her. "It may take a few more tries," he said, "but I know I can get your body to work.” The husband supported the doctor, but the wife was adamant. "No,” she said. “It's over. I am burying the dream of being a biological mother." The doctor wanted me to talk to her, to convince her to try again. I refused, recalling Emily Dickinson's line: We learn in the retreating. It was not the time to try to resurrect what was becoming for her a dead dream. We learn in the retreating.
And indeed, Jesus’ disciples had to learn in the retreating. Consider what it was they had once expected: a king, not unlike David, who united the northern and southern kingdoms and became a conquering hero. In Jesus’ day Rome had its boot on the Jews’ necks, and they wanted it off. They wanted what they once had---that dream of being a sovereign and powerful nation. Isn’t this what the Messiah was supposed to accomplish? And then along came Jesus, who overturned the conventional expectations.
He did not lead the way they thought he should lead. He taught them strange things about the first being last and the last being first. And now in this protracted farewell discourse, he is saying goodbye to what they had known, to what had been so familiar, if not always comfortable. He would be leaving them, but they would not be abandoned; they would not be left as orphans. They would not have him as they once did, but he would ask God to send them the Spirit. Did they understand? No; they were grief stricken and afraid, because he was leaving them, and they could not yet see or imagine what would lie ahead. They would have to trust that there would be a new beginning, waiting for them. And so, do we all have to trust. We trust in a future we cannot see, a future that God promises will not leave us orphaned. There is always change; nothing stays the same. People come into our lives and people go out of our lives, but God goes with us and is with us through all that coming and going, through all that retreating. On this we can rely.
A Mother's Day Letter by: Rev. Sandra L. Olsen
May 10, 2020
Dear Friends,
This Sunday is Mother’s Day, and whether our mothers are alive or dead, whether we are mothers or not, this is a day, which invites us to reflect on and remember mothers. Mother’s Day can be very difficult for many people. For some it is because they lost their mothers at a very young age, and so they have no memory of their own, just the memories of others to fall back on. For others, who were adopted, the birth mother can be a sad, unknown absence, even when grateful for the mother who has raised and loved them. And then there are those whose mothers were abusive and cruel. Some people can forgive, while others, for a variety of reasons, cannot. And then there are the rest of us, who have and had good mothers, but not perfect ones. We can be grateful for our mothers without blaming them for failing to be perfect or saintly.
In the year 1907 a woman by the name of Anna Jarvis from Philadelphia held a memorial for her mother at St Andrew's Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia. Her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, had died in 1905, and Anna thought it important to honor not only her mother, but also all mothers. Her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, had been a peace activist who cared for wounded soldiers on both sides of the American Civil Wari and founded Work Clubs to address public health issues as well as care for the graves of fallen soldiers. Anna Jarvis wanted to honor her mother by continuing her mother’s work and to set aside a day to honor all mothers because she believed a mother is "the person who has done more for you than anyone in the world."
Ann Reeves Jarvis was not the only woman whose peace activism made an impact on Mother’s Day. Julia Ward Howe, an abolitionist and poet, best known for the words to The Battle Hymn of the Republic, called on mothers to oppose war. She wanted to have a Mother’s Peace Day and in 1870 wrote this Proclamation:
Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
“Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm, disarm! The sword is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning after his own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”
Whether this history of peace activism and opposition to war had anything to do with Congress’ initial reluctance to make Mother’s Day an official holiday, in 1908 the United States Congress rejected a proposal to make Mother’s Day an official holiday. Some Senators joked they would also have to make a Mother in Law’s Day. Nonetheless, Anna Jarvis would not give up, and by 1911 all U.S. states observed the holiday. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation making Mother’s Day an official national holiday on the second Sunday in May to honor mothers.
Anna Jarvis was proud that Mother’s Day became an official holiday, but she resented its commercialization. In the 1920’s Hallmark had the ingenious idea of selling Mother’s Day cards and soon other card companies followed. She disliked the profit motive behind the selling of the cards, and so she began to organize boycotts of Mother’s Day, and even threatened to sue the companies involved. She argued that people should write hand written notes to their mothers rather than buying gifts and pre-printed cards. In 1923 she organized a protest at a candy makers’ convention in Philadelphia and in 1925 staged a protest at a meeting of American War Mothers in 1925, who were selling carnations to raise money. Jarvis was arrested for disturbing the peace!
Neither Anna Jarvis nor Julia Ward Howe would recognize their original ideas in today’s celebration of Mother’s Day. They would lament the forgetting of the peace initiative and the commercialization of the celebration. Last year nearly $25 billion was spent on Mother’s Day (compared to $18 billion for Father’s Day), but this year with the virus still mandating lock downs and so many persons out of work, we would expect spending to be much less. Capitalism will take a hit this year but let us hope that mothers and motherhood will not!
Dear Friends,
This Sunday is Mother’s Day, and whether our mothers are alive or dead, whether we are mothers or not, this is a day, which invites us to reflect on and remember mothers. Mother’s Day can be very difficult for many people. For some it is because they lost their mothers at a very young age, and so they have no memory of their own, just the memories of others to fall back on. For others, who were adopted, the birth mother can be a sad, unknown absence, even when grateful for the mother who has raised and loved them. And then there are those whose mothers were abusive and cruel. Some people can forgive, while others, for a variety of reasons, cannot. And then there are the rest of us, who have and had good mothers, but not perfect ones. We can be grateful for our mothers without blaming them for failing to be perfect or saintly.
In the year 1907 a woman by the name of Anna Jarvis from Philadelphia held a memorial for her mother at St Andrew's Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia. Her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, had died in 1905, and Anna thought it important to honor not only her mother, but also all mothers. Her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, had been a peace activist who cared for wounded soldiers on both sides of the American Civil Wari and founded Work Clubs to address public health issues as well as care for the graves of fallen soldiers. Anna Jarvis wanted to honor her mother by continuing her mother’s work and to set aside a day to honor all mothers because she believed a mother is "the person who has done more for you than anyone in the world."
Ann Reeves Jarvis was not the only woman whose peace activism made an impact on Mother’s Day. Julia Ward Howe, an abolitionist and poet, best known for the words to The Battle Hymn of the Republic, called on mothers to oppose war. She wanted to have a Mother’s Peace Day and in 1870 wrote this Proclamation:
Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
“Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm, disarm! The sword is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning after his own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”
Whether this history of peace activism and opposition to war had anything to do with Congress’ initial reluctance to make Mother’s Day an official holiday, in 1908 the United States Congress rejected a proposal to make Mother’s Day an official holiday. Some Senators joked they would also have to make a Mother in Law’s Day. Nonetheless, Anna Jarvis would not give up, and by 1911 all U.S. states observed the holiday. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation making Mother’s Day an official national holiday on the second Sunday in May to honor mothers.
Anna Jarvis was proud that Mother’s Day became an official holiday, but she resented its commercialization. In the 1920’s Hallmark had the ingenious idea of selling Mother’s Day cards and soon other card companies followed. She disliked the profit motive behind the selling of the cards, and so she began to organize boycotts of Mother’s Day, and even threatened to sue the companies involved. She argued that people should write hand written notes to their mothers rather than buying gifts and pre-printed cards. In 1923 she organized a protest at a candy makers’ convention in Philadelphia and in 1925 staged a protest at a meeting of American War Mothers in 1925, who were selling carnations to raise money. Jarvis was arrested for disturbing the peace!
Neither Anna Jarvis nor Julia Ward Howe would recognize their original ideas in today’s celebration of Mother’s Day. They would lament the forgetting of the peace initiative and the commercialization of the celebration. Last year nearly $25 billion was spent on Mother’s Day (compared to $18 billion for Father’s Day), but this year with the virus still mandating lock downs and so many persons out of work, we would expect spending to be much less. Capitalism will take a hit this year but let us hope that mothers and motherhood will not!
Recent Sermons
VOICES OF AUTHORITY by Rev. Sandra L. Olsen 5/10/2020
Isaiah 35: 1-7
John 14: 1-14
In both of today’s readings we hear voices of authority. Isaiah, as you heard in the introduction, was speaking to exiles in Babylon, and his words were designed to give hope to people, who were on the edge of hopelessness. They had lost almost everything. As the elite in Israelite society, they were accustomed to calling the shots, accustomed to a certain degree of wealth and comfort. Precisely because they were the educated and the skilled, they were the ones taken into exile, where they were expected to work on behalf of the Babylonian society. Now understand that these exiles were not slaves. They were allowed to build and maintain their own homes, work at trades and professions, allowed to worship their God in this strange, new land. But from a psychological and spiritual perspective, we can imagine their anxiety and depression--- though as the years went by, some adjusted to their new reality as new generations were born, and many would later elect to remain in Babylon, when the elapse of 50 years brought the Persians to power, who allowed the Jews, who so desired, to return home.
Now these words of Isaiah were written before that return, during a time of national crisis, when people were feeling the pain of their defeat and exile. And Isaiah spoke with great authority. This is what prophets do; they speak with authority without a hint of ambiguity or uncertainty. “Thus said the Lord,” and then the prophet would tell the people what God said and what God would do--- in this case, God would make the desert bloom, open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf. Waters would break forth in the wilderness, and streams would run in the desert. Now we don’t know if Isaiah’s words were universally believed by the exiled Jews, but we do know these words were memorable enough to have been preserved, memorable enough to be deemed sacred scripture.
Now consider the words from the 14th chapter of John. This is part of a long farewell discourse by Jesus, going on for many chapters. Jesus here is saying good-bye to his disciples as he prepares to go to the cross, where he will die. And unlike Matthew, Mark and Luke, there is no hint of fear here ---no begging for the cup to pass. In John we have the resurrected Christ speaking from the very beginning of the gospel. Most likely the historical Jesus did not sound like this. But what may not be historically true, may indeed be existentially true, meaning that there is deep and abiding truth here concerning God and human beings. And human beings are anxious, troubled creatures, so is it any wonder we hear Jesus command, “Do not let your hearts be troubled?”
But their hearts were troubled. They did not understand what Jesus was talking about. He told them he was going to prepare a place for them in God’s realm, where there would be many different dwelling places, but they had no idea what he meant by that. Thomas directly admitted that they did not know where he was going; they did not know the way. And then Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, the life.” Philip then wanted to know the way to the Father, and Jesus told him that if they have seen him (Jesus) they have also seen the Father. Have you been with me all this time, and still you do not know, Jesus asked?
No, they still did not know; they still did not understand, and though Jesus spoke with great authority, as Isaiah did, such authority does not necessarily create understanding, especially when the issues are complex and difficult to grasp. Yet even when understanding is weak, authority can still create trust. And sometimes trust can be more important than understanding. We are seeing this right now in our own nation. One of the most trusted persons is Dr. Fauci, who talks to the nation about Covid-19. He is trusted not because Americans understand all the complexities of the disease, but he is trusted because he speaks plainly and honestly without claiming unlimited authority, and if he does not know something, he is not afraid to admit it. In his case authority and trust go together.
When I was a hospital chaplain, I saw issues of authority and trust played out all the time. I learned very quickly that there were some patients, who simply could not tolerate any ambiguity from their physician. Unless the doctor spoke with an unambiguous voice of authority, they would become panic-stricken. But, of course, many of us understand that medicine requires interpretation, and sometimes the path ahead is not so unambiguously clear. There were patients, who could not accept that this is the way medicine sometimes is. And so, the doctor would not only suffer a loss of authority but also a loss of trust.
And in religion the same is also true. Some people insist their religion give them definite, unambiguous answers to complex questions. I remember a hospital patient asking me once, if I believed in hell. Well, I asked, what do you mean by hell? What do you mean, what do I mean she asked? Hell, you know what that means. But when I said the word suggests different things to different people, she could not grasp that. And so, I lost all authority with her. She had no place for nuanced thinking in her religious life.
The Bible is sacred scripture, but it is not a direct recording of the voice of God or Jesus. Some words and stories are the products of collective memories, interpreted through the lens of time and experience, emerging from particular communities with particular perspectives. Biblical materials can be imaginative, yet deeply true, because they effectively help us to orient ourselves in what can be a very unsettling world. We may not be able to say with absolute certainty that Jesus said this or that, but we can trust that what is being offered truly reflects something deeply true about the human condition and the world as well as God. Does it really matter, for example, if the story of the Good Samaritan actually happened, or is the truth of the story something far deeper than a mere historical occurrence? Do we trust Jesus because we think that everything he is recorded as saying in the bible actually came out of his mouth, or do we trust him because the overall arc of his life, death and destiny ring true to us in the very smithy of our souls?
I recently came across something, written by a journalist, who decades ago, had a terrifying experience in Cambodia. It was a time when civil rule was weak, with bands of marauding thugs administering their own brand of justice. Well, one afternoon the journalist saw a man, being beaten to death by some thugs, surrounded by a crowd of people, doing nothing to intervene. The victim was already unconscious, and if the beating continued, he would die. And so, without much forethought, the journalist raced to the scene, and screamed at the men to stop while pulling one man away, who was kicking the victim in the head. He was sure he was going to be beaten next. But no one did a thing. The surrounding crowds just stared at him, while those doing the beating, began to move away. For an hour the reporter remained by the victim’s side, until an ambulance finally came to take him to the hospital, where he miraculously recovered.
The journalist said this experience had taught him something significant about authority, something he had not known before. So much of the time in his work as a foreign correspondent he was writing about complex issues, where truth seemed ambiguous, at best. And so, he felt his authority as a journalist was also ambiguous, and yet, he said that when he rushed to that man’s side, he knew that he had the authority to do the right thing. He had no doubts at all, and even if he would die, it was for the good and the right. Never had he felt such authority flow over him, and he said that he felt the authority came from God. “Though I am not a very religious man,” he wrote, “I do believe God desires us to pursue the good and the right. And I still believe after two decades of hindsight that in that instance, I had the authority of God on my side.
Both Isaiah and Jesus spoke with authority. They spoke of God, of God’s actions in human life and history. And now millennia later, we trust and believe them, not because history confirms all they said and did. We know history is filled with vagaries and ambiguities, but we trust them because in them and through them we see hints and promises of the new creation. And
that is enough to lead us forward. That is enough authority for us to trust what they say.
Isaiah 35: 1-7
John 14: 1-14
In both of today’s readings we hear voices of authority. Isaiah, as you heard in the introduction, was speaking to exiles in Babylon, and his words were designed to give hope to people, who were on the edge of hopelessness. They had lost almost everything. As the elite in Israelite society, they were accustomed to calling the shots, accustomed to a certain degree of wealth and comfort. Precisely because they were the educated and the skilled, they were the ones taken into exile, where they were expected to work on behalf of the Babylonian society. Now understand that these exiles were not slaves. They were allowed to build and maintain their own homes, work at trades and professions, allowed to worship their God in this strange, new land. But from a psychological and spiritual perspective, we can imagine their anxiety and depression--- though as the years went by, some adjusted to their new reality as new generations were born, and many would later elect to remain in Babylon, when the elapse of 50 years brought the Persians to power, who allowed the Jews, who so desired, to return home.
Now these words of Isaiah were written before that return, during a time of national crisis, when people were feeling the pain of their defeat and exile. And Isaiah spoke with great authority. This is what prophets do; they speak with authority without a hint of ambiguity or uncertainty. “Thus said the Lord,” and then the prophet would tell the people what God said and what God would do--- in this case, God would make the desert bloom, open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf. Waters would break forth in the wilderness, and streams would run in the desert. Now we don’t know if Isaiah’s words were universally believed by the exiled Jews, but we do know these words were memorable enough to have been preserved, memorable enough to be deemed sacred scripture.
Now consider the words from the 14th chapter of John. This is part of a long farewell discourse by Jesus, going on for many chapters. Jesus here is saying good-bye to his disciples as he prepares to go to the cross, where he will die. And unlike Matthew, Mark and Luke, there is no hint of fear here ---no begging for the cup to pass. In John we have the resurrected Christ speaking from the very beginning of the gospel. Most likely the historical Jesus did not sound like this. But what may not be historically true, may indeed be existentially true, meaning that there is deep and abiding truth here concerning God and human beings. And human beings are anxious, troubled creatures, so is it any wonder we hear Jesus command, “Do not let your hearts be troubled?”
But their hearts were troubled. They did not understand what Jesus was talking about. He told them he was going to prepare a place for them in God’s realm, where there would be many different dwelling places, but they had no idea what he meant by that. Thomas directly admitted that they did not know where he was going; they did not know the way. And then Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, the life.” Philip then wanted to know the way to the Father, and Jesus told him that if they have seen him (Jesus) they have also seen the Father. Have you been with me all this time, and still you do not know, Jesus asked?
No, they still did not know; they still did not understand, and though Jesus spoke with great authority, as Isaiah did, such authority does not necessarily create understanding, especially when the issues are complex and difficult to grasp. Yet even when understanding is weak, authority can still create trust. And sometimes trust can be more important than understanding. We are seeing this right now in our own nation. One of the most trusted persons is Dr. Fauci, who talks to the nation about Covid-19. He is trusted not because Americans understand all the complexities of the disease, but he is trusted because he speaks plainly and honestly without claiming unlimited authority, and if he does not know something, he is not afraid to admit it. In his case authority and trust go together.
When I was a hospital chaplain, I saw issues of authority and trust played out all the time. I learned very quickly that there were some patients, who simply could not tolerate any ambiguity from their physician. Unless the doctor spoke with an unambiguous voice of authority, they would become panic-stricken. But, of course, many of us understand that medicine requires interpretation, and sometimes the path ahead is not so unambiguously clear. There were patients, who could not accept that this is the way medicine sometimes is. And so, the doctor would not only suffer a loss of authority but also a loss of trust.
And in religion the same is also true. Some people insist their religion give them definite, unambiguous answers to complex questions. I remember a hospital patient asking me once, if I believed in hell. Well, I asked, what do you mean by hell? What do you mean, what do I mean she asked? Hell, you know what that means. But when I said the word suggests different things to different people, she could not grasp that. And so, I lost all authority with her. She had no place for nuanced thinking in her religious life.
The Bible is sacred scripture, but it is not a direct recording of the voice of God or Jesus. Some words and stories are the products of collective memories, interpreted through the lens of time and experience, emerging from particular communities with particular perspectives. Biblical materials can be imaginative, yet deeply true, because they effectively help us to orient ourselves in what can be a very unsettling world. We may not be able to say with absolute certainty that Jesus said this or that, but we can trust that what is being offered truly reflects something deeply true about the human condition and the world as well as God. Does it really matter, for example, if the story of the Good Samaritan actually happened, or is the truth of the story something far deeper than a mere historical occurrence? Do we trust Jesus because we think that everything he is recorded as saying in the bible actually came out of his mouth, or do we trust him because the overall arc of his life, death and destiny ring true to us in the very smithy of our souls?
I recently came across something, written by a journalist, who decades ago, had a terrifying experience in Cambodia. It was a time when civil rule was weak, with bands of marauding thugs administering their own brand of justice. Well, one afternoon the journalist saw a man, being beaten to death by some thugs, surrounded by a crowd of people, doing nothing to intervene. The victim was already unconscious, and if the beating continued, he would die. And so, without much forethought, the journalist raced to the scene, and screamed at the men to stop while pulling one man away, who was kicking the victim in the head. He was sure he was going to be beaten next. But no one did a thing. The surrounding crowds just stared at him, while those doing the beating, began to move away. For an hour the reporter remained by the victim’s side, until an ambulance finally came to take him to the hospital, where he miraculously recovered.
The journalist said this experience had taught him something significant about authority, something he had not known before. So much of the time in his work as a foreign correspondent he was writing about complex issues, where truth seemed ambiguous, at best. And so, he felt his authority as a journalist was also ambiguous, and yet, he said that when he rushed to that man’s side, he knew that he had the authority to do the right thing. He had no doubts at all, and even if he would die, it was for the good and the right. Never had he felt such authority flow over him, and he said that he felt the authority came from God. “Though I am not a very religious man,” he wrote, “I do believe God desires us to pursue the good and the right. And I still believe after two decades of hindsight that in that instance, I had the authority of God on my side.
Both Isaiah and Jesus spoke with authority. They spoke of God, of God’s actions in human life and history. And now millennia later, we trust and believe them, not because history confirms all they said and did. We know history is filled with vagaries and ambiguities, but we trust them because in them and through them we see hints and promises of the new creation. And
that is enough to lead us forward. That is enough authority for us to trust what they say.
GATES AND GATEKEEPERSby Rev. Sandra L. Olsen 5/3/2020
Psalm 23
John 10: 1-10
Most of us are pretty familiar with the image of Jesus as the good shepherd, just as most of us recognize the 23rd Psalm. In fact, even non-religious people tend to know that psalm; it is probably the most common request at funerals---for both church and unchurched people alike. But while the shepherd image for God and Jesus is a familiar one, it is important to understand that a shepherd was about as low status as you could get---just a mark above a tax collector or a prostitute. No self-respecting Jew would aspire to become a shepherd, because it was considered an unclean job, requiring ritual purification if one wanted to enter the Temple or undertake some other religious responsibility. Yet it is ironically fitting that we call Jesus a shepherd, because not only did he care for his dumb sheep, but he also was especially inclusive of the least of these. He associated with and defended those of no status or low status, so their status was applied to him. He became one of them, despised and rejected, a person of no value, crucified as a criminal between two thieves.
Though we know the image of Jesus as shepherd, we never hear people call him the gate. And yet, it is one of the 15 I AM statements, unique to John’s gospel: I am the way, the truth the life; I am the vine; I am the light of the world, and here in John 10, we hear Jesus calling himself the gate through which the sheep enter. There is no other legitimate way to get in except through this gate. You can gain entrance by climbing over the wall of the sheep’s enclosure, but if you do, you are called a thief and a robber.
Now from the perspective of our post-modern culture, this exclusivity sounds harsh, and indeed it is. But, it is essential to our understanding of the text to note that today’s passage comes directly after a serious controversy Jesus had with the Pharisees, after he had healed a blind man on the Sabbath. The Pharisees accused Jesus of ignoring the Law by working on the Sabbath, and so John’s gospel intends to draw a sharp distinction between Jesus and those who continue to follow the letter of the Jewish Law. Remember, this gospel was written around the year 100, during a time a high tension between Jews, loyal to the synagogue and Jews, following Jesus. The followers of Jesus were being expelled from the synagogues, and so the backlash against those who remained within Judaism was the claim that there is no salvation except through Christ. The Jewish Law as a means of salvation was declared dead by the new Christians, and so, if you failed to enter through the gate that is Jesus Christ, you are lost. So said the community that produced this gospel, but there is no proof that Jesus ever said anything of the kind.
Let’s be honest: this theme of exclusivity is a far too common one in religion, which should make us all suspicious. Our own Puritan forebears thought they were the elect or at least among the elect, and the rest of humanity, especially the Roman Catholics and the Anglicans, be damned. But does not such a position say more about the people making the claim that it does about God or Christ? After all, what human being can see as God sees? Is it not more likely that God’s compassion and love are far wider and deeper and more inclusive than ours? And if it were not so, would God then truly be God, someone worthy of our deepest love and devotion?
Now to turn to this image of the gate, through which the sheep enter. In Jesus’ day the gate into the sheep’s enclosure was not like the gates we have today. When the shepherd led his flack back to their home, after grazing during the day, he led them through a space into a defined enclosure, surrounded by a wall. What prevented the sheep from getting out---they could not climb over the wall--- was quite literally the body of the shepherd, who would place himself across the opening. At night he would sleep there. So his body is what kept the sheep safely inside. But in the morning, the shepherd would lead his sheep out. In fact, the Greek word, translated here in verse 4 as brought out---When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them---would more accurately be translated as cast or drive, the same verb John uses to describe Jesus casting out demons or driving out the money changers from the Temple. In other words, the sheep cannot securely stay in the enclosure. Jesus pushes them, casts them, drives them out of the safe enclosure into a wider and bigger world where they are fed. This is a symbolic way of telling us that while the familiar feels safe and comfortable, this is not where God in Jesus Christ is asking us to remain.
Can you think of a time in your life when you were cast and driven out, when you had to walk through a door or open a gate, leading you into an unfamiliar nd frightening world. I remember very well when I first began working, now more than 30 years ago, at Central Islip Psychiatric Center on Long Island. That massive hospital in the 80’s had shrunken in size to accommodate only the most mentally ill people---persons who had been hospitalized for forty years or so, some lobotomized in a time before psychotropic medication. When I went on the wards, I had to unlock these huge heavy doors, and when they shut behind me, I could hear this loud bang and click, notifying me that I too was locked in along with the patients. Unnerved, yes; frightened, a little. What did I really know or understand of mental illness? I used to walk those wards, repeating over and over again a line from the Old Testament book of Isaiah, Oh truly you are a God who hides yourself. And yet, in time the hidden God would sometimes be made known to me. Looking back, I believe I was driven there, pushed there, cast out of my comfort zone by a God who had something to teach me, something I would never have learned had I remained where I was.
I remember so well this patient, Clara, whose voices 40 years before had commanded her to stab to death her three young children, because she was convinced that Satan had taken residence in them. According to the chart, Clara had showed no schizophrenic behaviors until a year after her husband had died in a grizzly work accident, and depressed and alone with three children she began to be assaulted by voices---first only at night, then during the day and then all the time. Clara had been hospitalized for nearly 40 years and with improved psychotropic medication, she was improved---improved enough to know what she had done. And now her struggle had become a religious one as she was sure God hated her.
Clara was Roman Catholic, and she absolutely convinced she was unworthy to take the body and blood and Christ, but one day, when my Presbyterian colleague and I were celebrating the sacrament, we were NOT using those little white, round flattened, tasteless wafers, and instead had a loaf of bread. And when the words were spoken, This is my body, given for you, and my colleague literally ripped the bread apart, Clara took it for the first time in many decades. I have often wondered if seeing the bread ripped and broken apart became for her an appropriate symbol for her own brokenness.
None of us likes going to places far outside our comfort zones. Who really wants to enter a prison, or go into the intensive care unit, or visit someone on hospice? And people are very clever at making all kinds of excuses. “I can’t stand seeing them that way; it isn’t how I want to remember them.” But what if it is not all about what we want? What if it is really about something else---what God in Christ calls us, pushes us, casts us and drives us out to do? We all walk through many gates and doors, and some of them are hard and heavy to open and some shut hard against us. We may not want to be there, but sometimes we are where we are, not because of our desire, but because of need, a need of someone else’s, or so we think, until we go and realize that the need was also ours---a need to learn, a need to change, a need to be more than we really are.
Psalm 23
John 10: 1-10
Most of us are pretty familiar with the image of Jesus as the good shepherd, just as most of us recognize the 23rd Psalm. In fact, even non-religious people tend to know that psalm; it is probably the most common request at funerals---for both church and unchurched people alike. But while the shepherd image for God and Jesus is a familiar one, it is important to understand that a shepherd was about as low status as you could get---just a mark above a tax collector or a prostitute. No self-respecting Jew would aspire to become a shepherd, because it was considered an unclean job, requiring ritual purification if one wanted to enter the Temple or undertake some other religious responsibility. Yet it is ironically fitting that we call Jesus a shepherd, because not only did he care for his dumb sheep, but he also was especially inclusive of the least of these. He associated with and defended those of no status or low status, so their status was applied to him. He became one of them, despised and rejected, a person of no value, crucified as a criminal between two thieves.
Though we know the image of Jesus as shepherd, we never hear people call him the gate. And yet, it is one of the 15 I AM statements, unique to John’s gospel: I am the way, the truth the life; I am the vine; I am the light of the world, and here in John 10, we hear Jesus calling himself the gate through which the sheep enter. There is no other legitimate way to get in except through this gate. You can gain entrance by climbing over the wall of the sheep’s enclosure, but if you do, you are called a thief and a robber.
Now from the perspective of our post-modern culture, this exclusivity sounds harsh, and indeed it is. But, it is essential to our understanding of the text to note that today’s passage comes directly after a serious controversy Jesus had with the Pharisees, after he had healed a blind man on the Sabbath. The Pharisees accused Jesus of ignoring the Law by working on the Sabbath, and so John’s gospel intends to draw a sharp distinction between Jesus and those who continue to follow the letter of the Jewish Law. Remember, this gospel was written around the year 100, during a time a high tension between Jews, loyal to the synagogue and Jews, following Jesus. The followers of Jesus were being expelled from the synagogues, and so the backlash against those who remained within Judaism was the claim that there is no salvation except through Christ. The Jewish Law as a means of salvation was declared dead by the new Christians, and so, if you failed to enter through the gate that is Jesus Christ, you are lost. So said the community that produced this gospel, but there is no proof that Jesus ever said anything of the kind.
Let’s be honest: this theme of exclusivity is a far too common one in religion, which should make us all suspicious. Our own Puritan forebears thought they were the elect or at least among the elect, and the rest of humanity, especially the Roman Catholics and the Anglicans, be damned. But does not such a position say more about the people making the claim that it does about God or Christ? After all, what human being can see as God sees? Is it not more likely that God’s compassion and love are far wider and deeper and more inclusive than ours? And if it were not so, would God then truly be God, someone worthy of our deepest love and devotion?
Now to turn to this image of the gate, through which the sheep enter. In Jesus’ day the gate into the sheep’s enclosure was not like the gates we have today. When the shepherd led his flack back to their home, after grazing during the day, he led them through a space into a defined enclosure, surrounded by a wall. What prevented the sheep from getting out---they could not climb over the wall--- was quite literally the body of the shepherd, who would place himself across the opening. At night he would sleep there. So his body is what kept the sheep safely inside. But in the morning, the shepherd would lead his sheep out. In fact, the Greek word, translated here in verse 4 as brought out---When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them---would more accurately be translated as cast or drive, the same verb John uses to describe Jesus casting out demons or driving out the money changers from the Temple. In other words, the sheep cannot securely stay in the enclosure. Jesus pushes them, casts them, drives them out of the safe enclosure into a wider and bigger world where they are fed. This is a symbolic way of telling us that while the familiar feels safe and comfortable, this is not where God in Jesus Christ is asking us to remain.
Can you think of a time in your life when you were cast and driven out, when you had to walk through a door or open a gate, leading you into an unfamiliar nd frightening world. I remember very well when I first began working, now more than 30 years ago, at Central Islip Psychiatric Center on Long Island. That massive hospital in the 80’s had shrunken in size to accommodate only the most mentally ill people---persons who had been hospitalized for forty years or so, some lobotomized in a time before psychotropic medication. When I went on the wards, I had to unlock these huge heavy doors, and when they shut behind me, I could hear this loud bang and click, notifying me that I too was locked in along with the patients. Unnerved, yes; frightened, a little. What did I really know or understand of mental illness? I used to walk those wards, repeating over and over again a line from the Old Testament book of Isaiah, Oh truly you are a God who hides yourself. And yet, in time the hidden God would sometimes be made known to me. Looking back, I believe I was driven there, pushed there, cast out of my comfort zone by a God who had something to teach me, something I would never have learned had I remained where I was.
I remember so well this patient, Clara, whose voices 40 years before had commanded her to stab to death her three young children, because she was convinced that Satan had taken residence in them. According to the chart, Clara had showed no schizophrenic behaviors until a year after her husband had died in a grizzly work accident, and depressed and alone with three children she began to be assaulted by voices---first only at night, then during the day and then all the time. Clara had been hospitalized for nearly 40 years and with improved psychotropic medication, she was improved---improved enough to know what she had done. And now her struggle had become a religious one as she was sure God hated her.
Clara was Roman Catholic, and she absolutely convinced she was unworthy to take the body and blood and Christ, but one day, when my Presbyterian colleague and I were celebrating the sacrament, we were NOT using those little white, round flattened, tasteless wafers, and instead had a loaf of bread. And when the words were spoken, This is my body, given for you, and my colleague literally ripped the bread apart, Clara took it for the first time in many decades. I have often wondered if seeing the bread ripped and broken apart became for her an appropriate symbol for her own brokenness.
None of us likes going to places far outside our comfort zones. Who really wants to enter a prison, or go into the intensive care unit, or visit someone on hospice? And people are very clever at making all kinds of excuses. “I can’t stand seeing them that way; it isn’t how I want to remember them.” But what if it is not all about what we want? What if it is really about something else---what God in Christ calls us, pushes us, casts us and drives us out to do? We all walk through many gates and doors, and some of them are hard and heavy to open and some shut hard against us. We may not want to be there, but sometimes we are where we are, not because of our desire, but because of need, a need of someone else’s, or so we think, until we go and realize that the need was also ours---a need to learn, a need to change, a need to be more than we really are.
THE ROAD TO EMMAUS by Rev. Sandra L. Olsen 4/26/20
Luke 24: 13-35
The road to Emmaus: It’s a story, unique to Luke, about a meeting and a recognition that came not immediately but later, in the breaking of the bread. It is a story painted and drawn time and time again by many of the world’s greatest artist, including my two favorites, Caravaggio and Rembrandt, which I just showed you. So, what is it about this story that is so engaging?
First of all, it is mysterious. We do not know the identity of the two disciples. We might initially think they were among the original group, but verse 18 identifies one as Cleopas, who is not mentioned again. At the story’s end we are told that the two rush to report to the eleven what had happened, so we know that the second one was not part of the original group. Jesus, of course, had many followers, including women, but the emphasis in this story is upon Jesus and how he is or is not known and recognized.
These two disciples clearly had expectations of Jesus. They described him to their traveling companion as a prophet mighty in word and deed, and they had hoped he was the one to redeem Israel. But he was brutally murdered, they told the stranger, and now those precious hopes were dashed. They then told him about the Easter event, how women had gone to the tomb and were told that Jesus is alive. The stranger’s response was to tell them in so many words that they were foolish, and so he interpreted for them scripture, beginning with Moses, going all the way through the prophets. Did the Messiah, he asked, not have to suffer and die? But still, they did not understand; still they did not recognize who this stranger was. Now at this point we might be tempted to say, “How dumb can they be?” But notice what the text at the beginning of the story tells us: their eyes were kept from recognizing him.
Now that sounds strange, doesn’t it? But there are these places in scripture where people are prevented from doing or understanding, Pharaoh, for example, whose heart was hardened by God, which meant that he would not let the Israelites go. So, the disciples were not completely responsible for their failure to recognize Jesus, and it is true that throughout Christian history, especially in the days of the Reformation, reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin, would insist that faith was a gift, something coming from God. It was not a work or an achievement one could make on one’s own.
But finally, these disciples did recognize Jesus. And if God permitted or caused the recognition, it happened when they gathered around a table, where food was shared. It was in the blessing and the breaking of the bread that they recognized Jesus. Now something very critical is being said here. It was not a solitary recognition that came in the privacy of one’s own room. There is a gathering, though a small one, but as Jesus would say to us, “Wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, lo, I am with you.” So, community matters, coming together matters, and we certainly know this now. Being in our homes in front of our computer screens or on our phones may be better than nothing, but it is not the same as being together in church. It is not enough. And people are learning all across the nation and the globe that there are radical limits to what technology can offer and achieve. There is something powerful, something even revelatory about the physicality of being together that cannot be fully imitated by a computer.
Because the Y in my town in closed, I get my exercise by walking. I have a particular path I take, which involves walking downtown, then up to Wesleyan University and then to Indian Hill Cemetery, where I walk around three times. Well, last week I happened to be in the cemetery when I noticed a graveside service. On my second time around I saw about 25 people, gathered in a circle, with some of the older members seated in chairs.
While they were socially distancing, they were nonetheless trying to create an intimacy by holding a rope that encompassed the entire circle. Since they could not hold hands, I guess they felt some connection through their mutual holding of the rope. But I noticed this one old man, who was standing apart from the group, but on my next time around, he was now included. Two days later I happened to see the director of the funeral home, and since I knew him quite well, I commented that I had seen the funeral and the rope. Oh, he said, that was interesting, but the most interesting thing about that funeral was the old man, the father of the deceased, who had abandoned the family 60 years ago. He was only 25, when he left a wife and three boys behind, the youngest only 5 months old. And for all those years he never had any contact with them. But when his youngest son died, a man of 60 now, he suddenly showed up. No one seemed to recognize him, no one said a word, until one of his granddaughters, approached him and said, “Grandpa, I assume.” And she gathered him into the circle as she handed him the rope. We are all together in this, she said.
There is something about gathering together, especially in tough times, that helps us to see, to recognize who is among us. And now in the midst of this pandemic whom we will notice? Will we recognize Jesus when he shows up---shows up among the people and the places so easy to ignore and overlook? What we are now seeing in our nation is a great divide that reveals the tremendous wealth inequality that has been expanding for decades. It is no accident; it is the result of deliberate policy decisions, including taxation, that have decimated our public institutions and infrastructure and worked against the common good. Today there are 25% fewer public health care workers than there were 14 years ago. Today there are 1 million fewer people covered by health insurance than there were 3 years ago. Today the top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 80% of the nation. In 2016 the median American household had 30% lower net worth than it did in 2007, and the median net worth of Americans age 35 and under is 40% less than it was in 2004. But between 2007 and 2016 the top 10% saw their wealth grow by 13%. And if you just look at income rather than total wealth, since 1980, after adjusting for inflation and growth, the bottom 50% of workers have seen their income rise by 20% while the top 10% have expanded their income by 420%.
But if statistics do not grab you, perhaps some personal stories will. A high school principal in Phoenix recently came upon three students huddled under a blanket on a rainy day right outside the school building using the school’s wireless network to do schoolwork, because they did not have internet connections at home. In Las Vegas a parking lot where homeless people have been sleeping was suddenly painted with rectangles six feet apart, showing them how they should socially distance in their homelessness. And a bus driver in St. Louis, who took his clothes off in the front entrance to his home, and then rushed into the shower so as not to infect his wife and children, died two weeks ago of Covid 19. He had no option of working at home; he had to work to support his family, and now his family has lost him, his income and the health insurance his work provided.
The road to Emmaus: It is a meeting and a recognition, a road and a town where Jesus showed up. It was 7 miles from Jerusalem, but it is closer to us than that. The question is: will we, will our country notice who is on that road? Jesus has this habit of showing up among the poor and the dislocated, and you do not have to be a Christian to notice them. You simply need eyes and the desire to see. When the First Letter of Peter was written, the writer realized that Christians lived among non-Christians, and he wrote with the belief and understanding that there was something that drew people together---a common ethic of human decency, what we today would call the Common Good. While we Christians recognize Christ in the common good, not all will recognize the Christ, and we do not need to insist that they do. But we can hope and pray that all can and will recognize the GOOD to and for which we are responsible. And whenever or wherever such recognition occurs, surely Christ is among us, smiling.
Luke 24: 13-35
The road to Emmaus: It’s a story, unique to Luke, about a meeting and a recognition that came not immediately but later, in the breaking of the bread. It is a story painted and drawn time and time again by many of the world’s greatest artist, including my two favorites, Caravaggio and Rembrandt, which I just showed you. So, what is it about this story that is so engaging?
First of all, it is mysterious. We do not know the identity of the two disciples. We might initially think they were among the original group, but verse 18 identifies one as Cleopas, who is not mentioned again. At the story’s end we are told that the two rush to report to the eleven what had happened, so we know that the second one was not part of the original group. Jesus, of course, had many followers, including women, but the emphasis in this story is upon Jesus and how he is or is not known and recognized.
These two disciples clearly had expectations of Jesus. They described him to their traveling companion as a prophet mighty in word and deed, and they had hoped he was the one to redeem Israel. But he was brutally murdered, they told the stranger, and now those precious hopes were dashed. They then told him about the Easter event, how women had gone to the tomb and were told that Jesus is alive. The stranger’s response was to tell them in so many words that they were foolish, and so he interpreted for them scripture, beginning with Moses, going all the way through the prophets. Did the Messiah, he asked, not have to suffer and die? But still, they did not understand; still they did not recognize who this stranger was. Now at this point we might be tempted to say, “How dumb can they be?” But notice what the text at the beginning of the story tells us: their eyes were kept from recognizing him.
Now that sounds strange, doesn’t it? But there are these places in scripture where people are prevented from doing or understanding, Pharaoh, for example, whose heart was hardened by God, which meant that he would not let the Israelites go. So, the disciples were not completely responsible for their failure to recognize Jesus, and it is true that throughout Christian history, especially in the days of the Reformation, reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin, would insist that faith was a gift, something coming from God. It was not a work or an achievement one could make on one’s own.
But finally, these disciples did recognize Jesus. And if God permitted or caused the recognition, it happened when they gathered around a table, where food was shared. It was in the blessing and the breaking of the bread that they recognized Jesus. Now something very critical is being said here. It was not a solitary recognition that came in the privacy of one’s own room. There is a gathering, though a small one, but as Jesus would say to us, “Wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, lo, I am with you.” So, community matters, coming together matters, and we certainly know this now. Being in our homes in front of our computer screens or on our phones may be better than nothing, but it is not the same as being together in church. It is not enough. And people are learning all across the nation and the globe that there are radical limits to what technology can offer and achieve. There is something powerful, something even revelatory about the physicality of being together that cannot be fully imitated by a computer.
Because the Y in my town in closed, I get my exercise by walking. I have a particular path I take, which involves walking downtown, then up to Wesleyan University and then to Indian Hill Cemetery, where I walk around three times. Well, last week I happened to be in the cemetery when I noticed a graveside service. On my second time around I saw about 25 people, gathered in a circle, with some of the older members seated in chairs.
While they were socially distancing, they were nonetheless trying to create an intimacy by holding a rope that encompassed the entire circle. Since they could not hold hands, I guess they felt some connection through their mutual holding of the rope. But I noticed this one old man, who was standing apart from the group, but on my next time around, he was now included. Two days later I happened to see the director of the funeral home, and since I knew him quite well, I commented that I had seen the funeral and the rope. Oh, he said, that was interesting, but the most interesting thing about that funeral was the old man, the father of the deceased, who had abandoned the family 60 years ago. He was only 25, when he left a wife and three boys behind, the youngest only 5 months old. And for all those years he never had any contact with them. But when his youngest son died, a man of 60 now, he suddenly showed up. No one seemed to recognize him, no one said a word, until one of his granddaughters, approached him and said, “Grandpa, I assume.” And she gathered him into the circle as she handed him the rope. We are all together in this, she said.
There is something about gathering together, especially in tough times, that helps us to see, to recognize who is among us. And now in the midst of this pandemic whom we will notice? Will we recognize Jesus when he shows up---shows up among the people and the places so easy to ignore and overlook? What we are now seeing in our nation is a great divide that reveals the tremendous wealth inequality that has been expanding for decades. It is no accident; it is the result of deliberate policy decisions, including taxation, that have decimated our public institutions and infrastructure and worked against the common good. Today there are 25% fewer public health care workers than there were 14 years ago. Today there are 1 million fewer people covered by health insurance than there were 3 years ago. Today the top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 80% of the nation. In 2016 the median American household had 30% lower net worth than it did in 2007, and the median net worth of Americans age 35 and under is 40% less than it was in 2004. But between 2007 and 2016 the top 10% saw their wealth grow by 13%. And if you just look at income rather than total wealth, since 1980, after adjusting for inflation and growth, the bottom 50% of workers have seen their income rise by 20% while the top 10% have expanded their income by 420%.
But if statistics do not grab you, perhaps some personal stories will. A high school principal in Phoenix recently came upon three students huddled under a blanket on a rainy day right outside the school building using the school’s wireless network to do schoolwork, because they did not have internet connections at home. In Las Vegas a parking lot where homeless people have been sleeping was suddenly painted with rectangles six feet apart, showing them how they should socially distance in their homelessness. And a bus driver in St. Louis, who took his clothes off in the front entrance to his home, and then rushed into the shower so as not to infect his wife and children, died two weeks ago of Covid 19. He had no option of working at home; he had to work to support his family, and now his family has lost him, his income and the health insurance his work provided.
The road to Emmaus: It is a meeting and a recognition, a road and a town where Jesus showed up. It was 7 miles from Jerusalem, but it is closer to us than that. The question is: will we, will our country notice who is on that road? Jesus has this habit of showing up among the poor and the dislocated, and you do not have to be a Christian to notice them. You simply need eyes and the desire to see. When the First Letter of Peter was written, the writer realized that Christians lived among non-Christians, and he wrote with the belief and understanding that there was something that drew people together---a common ethic of human decency, what we today would call the Common Good. While we Christians recognize Christ in the common good, not all will recognize the Christ, and we do not need to insist that they do. But we can hope and pray that all can and will recognize the GOOD to and for which we are responsible. And whenever or wherever such recognition occurs, surely Christ is among us, smiling.
WHAT ARE YOU DOUBTING FOR? by Rev. Sandra L. Olsen 4/19/2020
John 20: 19-31
Let me begin by introducing myself; I’m Mary Magdalene. You’re surprised? Perhaps you were perhaps expecting someone else, like Thomas. After all, it is his story today. But then his story is all our stories, yours and mine, since none of us can have faith without doubt stalking us.
Last week you heard about my arrival at the tomb with another Mary, and how there was an earthquake with an angel descending from heaven to roll away the stone right before our eyes. That’s Matthew’s story, but this week we are in John’s Gospel, and he tells the story very differently. According to John, I was the only one to go to the tomb, and when I saw that it was empty, I was sure the body had been stolen. And I wept. That is when I saw the man I assumed to be the gardener, and I wanted to know where he had placed Jesus’ body. And then the man said my name, Mary, and suddenly I recognized Jesus, but he would not let me touch him. Do not cling to me, he commanded. And so I ran to tell Peter and John, and at top speed they both raced to the tomb to see for themselves. I mean why they have believed me anyway? that angel: Are you kidding? Why are these male disciples going to believe us? Women’s words meant nothing; we were not allowed to testify in court about anything at all. So that we were in all four of the the gospel accounts the first witnesses to the resurrection is really quite a startling occurrence. You would think in that day and time the announcement would have first come to the male disciples, that Jesus himself would have first appeared to them, but no, he showed himself to women first! The announcement came to us first. The irony of that should not be lost on any of you.
I often thought that the male disciples were a bit jealous of the fact that Jesus had close friends among women, and I was among those friends. As I just told you, women’s words meant nothing, so when Jesus actually listened to women and paid attention to what women said, the male disciples did not know what to make of this. It just was not the way things were done, not the way most men behaved toward most women.
But Thomas, well Thomas was different. Of all the disciples, he was the most accepting of me, the most accepting of women. You see Thomas was curious, and he asked a lot of questions. He lived by questions, and maybe that’s why he accepted me. He didn’t just accept the way things were; he wanted to know why, and although I never heard him question the position of women in society, I think he must have wondered about it, because that was the way he was. He wondered about everything. Such a contrast to Peter, who never seemed to think about anything. All heart and no head, I used to say to Jesus. Jesus would just smile and say, "Everyone has his or her place.” I guess so, but as far as I was concerned Peter’s place was the hole he used to jump into without first thinking.
Not Thomas; never Thomas. That cautious mind of his bordered on suspicion. He never believed anything easily, but then he was quite literally the thinker in the group. All groups need their thinkers, maybe their skeptics too. Isn’t that why the Bible made room for the books of Job and Ecclesiastes? They too were skeptics, questioning the assumptions that most people simply lived by and accepted. And so that’s why I think Jesus made room for Thomas. His questions always made a deep impression. But I want to remind you of something. In John’s Gospel he is the final voice that makes the confession Jesus is Lord and Savior. How about that? The doubter gets the last word!
Thomas told me once that doubts are like strainers; they catch things, keep some things from going through. And that’s an important task when it comes to faith, because some things need to be caught and carefully examined. You just can’t throw everything together in one mix. You have to consider things carefully, because as powerfully transforming as faith can be, it can also make a fool of you---if you believe too easily, without any struggle of the mind as well as the heart.
I would often notice Thomas standing apart from the other disciples, closely watching Jesus, listening carefully to his words, and studying his movements. Thomas said to me once, ”A man’s words must match his body.” ”What do you mean by that, Thomas?” I asked. ”I mean,” he said, ”that a man can deceive with his words, so watch what his body does. Especially note the eyes.” And so I did. I took Thomas’ advice, and I could see there was something to what Thomas said. I watched Judas the night he betrayed Jesus. I saw him right before he went upstairs to eat that final meal. He told Jesus he would get the wine and bring it upstairs. That is what his mouth said, but then I noticed how his hands shook a bit as he carried the wine up the stairs. Yes, Thomas was right about a lot of things.
I even think he was right to be suspicious about the resurrection. After all, he had not seen. And you know that saying---Seeing is believing. Oh, I know that you moderns think we were so naïve back then, prone to magical thinking and so believing in a resurrection was easy for us. How wrong you are. Why do you think the disciples were all huddled together in that room, filled with terrible fear? It wasn’t because they believed that Jesus had been raised. When I told them I had seen Jesus and he would see them in Galilee, their first thought was I must be crazy. But I really could not blame them for not believing me. I mean we all knew death. We knew what it looked like, what it smelled like, what it felt like. We knew that the dead do not rise. We were all on very intimate terms with death---unlike many of you, who may never have seen death up close. Until the blood dries on your hands and causes your feet to stick to the ground; until you plunge your hand into the gaping hole in the side, you do not know death. At least you do not know it the way we did.
And so when I told the disciples that I had seen Jesus, and he would see them in Galilee, they were very suspicious and also afraid. They wanted to believe me, I think, except for Thomas. You see Thomas had worked out in his mind a certain picture of reality. He thought he knew what the world was like. I don’t mean that he believed he had an answer to everything; he was far too humble for that, but he did believe that there were certain fundamentals, and let’s face it, death is one of those fundamentals. He had seen Jesus’ dead body. Death is death, and life is life, and woe to those who confuse the two.
I remember seeing Thomas a few days after he had seen the Lord, after Jesus had invited him to put his finger in the wound in Jesus’ side. Notice, by the way, that your text never said that Thomas did put his finger there---only that he was invited to do so by Jesus. But to return to my point. After he saw Jesus he was different, puzzled and even troubled. ”This is just the beginning,” he told me, ”and this beginning will be even harder than the ending we have just lived through." Thomas was the only disciple, I think, who then really understood that the resurrection meant that the world was turned upside down. For Thomas the wound in Jesus’ side was the wound of knowledge, reminding him that what he thought he knew and understood was not final. There was more to life, more to death than he could even begin to imagine. And Thomas, who would have preferred to live by knowledge, began to learn to live by faith. What a journey that was and is.
Some weeks after Jesus’ appearance to Thomas, he and I were talking together. And Thomas was feeling just terrible, because Jesus’ words rang as condemnation in his ears: ”Do not doubt, but believe.” Thomas, I said, Jesus wanted you around for a reason; you are needed, your perspective is needed. And just maybe, Jesus meant for you to use your doubt in a certain way. in John’s Gospel, Jesus asked me a question when I first saw him and failed to recognize him. He asked,”Woman, why are you weeping?” I thought he was asking me the cause of my pain. But now I think perhaps he might have meant---what am I weeping for---what am I using my tears for? To what purpose do I offer my grief?
Perhaps Jesus meant for you to ask yourself the same question. What are you doubting for? In other words, do not doubt to keep belief out, but doubt (if you must) to build up your belief. I remember how you told me once that doubts are like a strainer, preventing everything from going through. So use your doubts to keep out what is not worthy of faith. Use doubt for faith. Faith not in place of doubt, but faith in spite of doubt. Oh Thomas, if you can do that, what a gift you will be to all the many doubters, who will surely come after you.
Well, I've said enough for one day. But before I go, I want to ask you to consider how and if Thomas is truly a gift to you, and if he is, what are you doubting for? For what purpose and end are you using your doubts?
John 20: 19-31
Let me begin by introducing myself; I’m Mary Magdalene. You’re surprised? Perhaps you were perhaps expecting someone else, like Thomas. After all, it is his story today. But then his story is all our stories, yours and mine, since none of us can have faith without doubt stalking us.
Last week you heard about my arrival at the tomb with another Mary, and how there was an earthquake with an angel descending from heaven to roll away the stone right before our eyes. That’s Matthew’s story, but this week we are in John’s Gospel, and he tells the story very differently. According to John, I was the only one to go to the tomb, and when I saw that it was empty, I was sure the body had been stolen. And I wept. That is when I saw the man I assumed to be the gardener, and I wanted to know where he had placed Jesus’ body. And then the man said my name, Mary, and suddenly I recognized Jesus, but he would not let me touch him. Do not cling to me, he commanded. And so I ran to tell Peter and John, and at top speed they both raced to the tomb to see for themselves. I mean why they have believed me anyway? that angel: Are you kidding? Why are these male disciples going to believe us? Women’s words meant nothing; we were not allowed to testify in court about anything at all. So that we were in all four of the the gospel accounts the first witnesses to the resurrection is really quite a startling occurrence. You would think in that day and time the announcement would have first come to the male disciples, that Jesus himself would have first appeared to them, but no, he showed himself to women first! The announcement came to us first. The irony of that should not be lost on any of you.
I often thought that the male disciples were a bit jealous of the fact that Jesus had close friends among women, and I was among those friends. As I just told you, women’s words meant nothing, so when Jesus actually listened to women and paid attention to what women said, the male disciples did not know what to make of this. It just was not the way things were done, not the way most men behaved toward most women.
But Thomas, well Thomas was different. Of all the disciples, he was the most accepting of me, the most accepting of women. You see Thomas was curious, and he asked a lot of questions. He lived by questions, and maybe that’s why he accepted me. He didn’t just accept the way things were; he wanted to know why, and although I never heard him question the position of women in society, I think he must have wondered about it, because that was the way he was. He wondered about everything. Such a contrast to Peter, who never seemed to think about anything. All heart and no head, I used to say to Jesus. Jesus would just smile and say, "Everyone has his or her place.” I guess so, but as far as I was concerned Peter’s place was the hole he used to jump into without first thinking.
Not Thomas; never Thomas. That cautious mind of his bordered on suspicion. He never believed anything easily, but then he was quite literally the thinker in the group. All groups need their thinkers, maybe their skeptics too. Isn’t that why the Bible made room for the books of Job and Ecclesiastes? They too were skeptics, questioning the assumptions that most people simply lived by and accepted. And so that’s why I think Jesus made room for Thomas. His questions always made a deep impression. But I want to remind you of something. In John’s Gospel he is the final voice that makes the confession Jesus is Lord and Savior. How about that? The doubter gets the last word!
Thomas told me once that doubts are like strainers; they catch things, keep some things from going through. And that’s an important task when it comes to faith, because some things need to be caught and carefully examined. You just can’t throw everything together in one mix. You have to consider things carefully, because as powerfully transforming as faith can be, it can also make a fool of you---if you believe too easily, without any struggle of the mind as well as the heart.
I would often notice Thomas standing apart from the other disciples, closely watching Jesus, listening carefully to his words, and studying his movements. Thomas said to me once, ”A man’s words must match his body.” ”What do you mean by that, Thomas?” I asked. ”I mean,” he said, ”that a man can deceive with his words, so watch what his body does. Especially note the eyes.” And so I did. I took Thomas’ advice, and I could see there was something to what Thomas said. I watched Judas the night he betrayed Jesus. I saw him right before he went upstairs to eat that final meal. He told Jesus he would get the wine and bring it upstairs. That is what his mouth said, but then I noticed how his hands shook a bit as he carried the wine up the stairs. Yes, Thomas was right about a lot of things.
I even think he was right to be suspicious about the resurrection. After all, he had not seen. And you know that saying---Seeing is believing. Oh, I know that you moderns think we were so naïve back then, prone to magical thinking and so believing in a resurrection was easy for us. How wrong you are. Why do you think the disciples were all huddled together in that room, filled with terrible fear? It wasn’t because they believed that Jesus had been raised. When I told them I had seen Jesus and he would see them in Galilee, their first thought was I must be crazy. But I really could not blame them for not believing me. I mean we all knew death. We knew what it looked like, what it smelled like, what it felt like. We knew that the dead do not rise. We were all on very intimate terms with death---unlike many of you, who may never have seen death up close. Until the blood dries on your hands and causes your feet to stick to the ground; until you plunge your hand into the gaping hole in the side, you do not know death. At least you do not know it the way we did.
And so when I told the disciples that I had seen Jesus, and he would see them in Galilee, they were very suspicious and also afraid. They wanted to believe me, I think, except for Thomas. You see Thomas had worked out in his mind a certain picture of reality. He thought he knew what the world was like. I don’t mean that he believed he had an answer to everything; he was far too humble for that, but he did believe that there were certain fundamentals, and let’s face it, death is one of those fundamentals. He had seen Jesus’ dead body. Death is death, and life is life, and woe to those who confuse the two.
I remember seeing Thomas a few days after he had seen the Lord, after Jesus had invited him to put his finger in the wound in Jesus’ side. Notice, by the way, that your text never said that Thomas did put his finger there---only that he was invited to do so by Jesus. But to return to my point. After he saw Jesus he was different, puzzled and even troubled. ”This is just the beginning,” he told me, ”and this beginning will be even harder than the ending we have just lived through." Thomas was the only disciple, I think, who then really understood that the resurrection meant that the world was turned upside down. For Thomas the wound in Jesus’ side was the wound of knowledge, reminding him that what he thought he knew and understood was not final. There was more to life, more to death than he could even begin to imagine. And Thomas, who would have preferred to live by knowledge, began to learn to live by faith. What a journey that was and is.
Some weeks after Jesus’ appearance to Thomas, he and I were talking together. And Thomas was feeling just terrible, because Jesus’ words rang as condemnation in his ears: ”Do not doubt, but believe.” Thomas, I said, Jesus wanted you around for a reason; you are needed, your perspective is needed. And just maybe, Jesus meant for you to use your doubt in a certain way. in John’s Gospel, Jesus asked me a question when I first saw him and failed to recognize him. He asked,”Woman, why are you weeping?” I thought he was asking me the cause of my pain. But now I think perhaps he might have meant---what am I weeping for---what am I using my tears for? To what purpose do I offer my grief?
Perhaps Jesus meant for you to ask yourself the same question. What are you doubting for? In other words, do not doubt to keep belief out, but doubt (if you must) to build up your belief. I remember how you told me once that doubts are like a strainer, preventing everything from going through. So use your doubts to keep out what is not worthy of faith. Use doubt for faith. Faith not in place of doubt, but faith in spite of doubt. Oh Thomas, if you can do that, what a gift you will be to all the many doubters, who will surely come after you.
Well, I've said enough for one day. But before I go, I want to ask you to consider how and if Thomas is truly a gift to you, and if he is, what are you doubting for? For what purpose and end are you using your doubts?
POKING HOLES IN THE DARKNESS by Rev. Sandra L. Olsen 4/12/2020
Easter Sunday
Matthew 28: 1-10
When the writer, Robert Louis Stevenson was a child, he was very sickly, and was forced to spend a lot of time in bed. One evening as the darkness began to descend, he climbed out of bed and pressed his face to the glass as he watched the lamplighter go from pole to pole, lighting each lamp. When his nurse entered the room, she was horrified to see him out of bed. Though she ordered him back in bed, he could not take his eyes off the lamplighter. Look, he said, how he is poking holes in the darkness. And in a sense, this is what God is doing at Easter. God is poking holes in the darkness.
Let’s face it: not all the pain and suffering in the world---what is often called darkness--- has been removed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We certainly knew this before, but now we know it even more intimately as the world battles against this terrible virus. Though faith tells us that all manner of things shall finally be made well, the complete victory has not yet been achieved. It is finished, Jesus announced from the cross, but for us on this earth, it is not completely over. God is still doing battle with the forces of evil, though the resurrection tells us victory is assured.
You know how at Christmas time we have these different stories of Jesus’ birth, which are really quite different from one another? In Luke Jesus is born in Bethlehem, in Matthew at home in Nazareth. Luke has the lowly shepherds, while Matthew gives us the wise men. In Luke we have the annunciation made to Mary; in Matthew it is Joseph who hears it first. Well, the same sort of thing is true of the gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection. We simply cannot pretend they are all the same, because each one has its own perspective, born of a particular historical and cultural context. But they do agree on three things: (1) the resurrection occurs in the early morning hours, two days after the crucifixion; (2) Mary Magdalene is present at the tomb and (3) the tomb is empty.
And then come the dissimilarities. In Matthew, Mark and Luke the women arrive at the tomb, early, with the in-breaking of light, either at dawn or immediately after sunrise. John’s Gospel makes a point of telling us it was dark. There is also disagreement about the number and the names of the women, except for Mary Magdalene, who makes it into all four gospel accounts. Matthew names two women, Mary Magdalene and another Mary; Luke names three women and then adds that others accompanied them to the tomb. John has Mary Magdalene go to the tomb alone. Then there is a difference about the placement of the stone at the tomb’s doorway. In three of the gospels the stone has been rolled away before the women arrived. But Matthew is different. As we just heard there is a lot of drama here with an earthquake and an angel rolling away the stone after the women arrive. And with such a dramatic introduction, we might expect Jesus to suddenly be resurrected right before the women’s eyes. But that does not happen. The resurrection has already taken place, in the bleak darkness of the night while the tomb was sealed. Jesus has already left the tomb.
Notice then that the angel gives the women a direct order: Go and tell Jesus’ disciples of his resurrection as well as tell them they will see him not in the capital, the Holy City of Jerusalem, where he was executed, but in Galilee, the place where the whole Jesus enterprise had begun. Now Galilee in Matthew has pride of place. When Jesus began his ministry there, Matthew, quoting from Isaiah, calls it “Galilee of the Gentiles.” Galilee is right on the border, the border between the Jewish world and the gentile one. Isaiah and Matthew both stress that the light that shines in the darkness is a light for all the world. And so, it makes sense that Jesus would not linger in Jewish territory but would meet his disciples in a place that casts a universal message.
The two women who have just been told to go to the disciples with the message then suddenly meet the risen Christ, standing right before them as if to prevent their movement. They recognize him, worship him, even grabbing onto his feet—quite a contrast to the story as it is told in John’s Gospel, where Mary Magdalene who does not initially recognize Jesus, later is commanded not to touch him. Do not cling to me, Jesus warns. But in Matthew there is no such prohibition.
So, what do we make of this story, whose details we cannot harmonize? What truth can we garner? What do we hear from the angel and Jesus that have any relevance to our lives? We hear two words: Go! Tell! The women cannot remain outside the tomb, hanging on to Jesus’ feet. They are to go to the disciples and tell them of the resurrection and the coming meeting in Galilee. They have, in other words, something to do.
Easter then is not a passive believing. We are not exemplary Christians simply because we believe that Jesus was resurrected. No, there is something more, especially in the going and the telling. N.T. Wright, an Anglican priest and a renown biblical scholar, (whom some of us have read in our Sunday morning discussions) calls Easter “a launch pad.” He does not mean that Easter is a launch pad for going to heaven. Notice that Matthew’s story of the resurrection says nothing about life after death or going to heaven. It is the effect of the resurrection on the lives of Jesus’ followers that matters most to Matthew. Jesus is raised, the first fruits of the new creation have begun, and so the followers of Jesus have a job to do. The fullness of the new creation has not yet come. Death and sin still have their say, and so God calls Jesus’ followers to go and tell---proclaim that God in Jesus’ resurrection has poked holes in the darkness.
And we poke holes in many different ways. When we feed the hungry, we poke holes; when we forgo vindictiveness and forgive, another hole is poked, when we recognize our enemies and the harm and evil they do, yet still pray for them and desire full and abundant life for them, we help God poke holes in the darkness. Artists and composers also poke holes as Leonard Bernstein did in his
Mass, composed in memory of John F. Kennedy. The Mass is not only musical; it is also enacted. There is this section, when the priest, who has been lifted up as part of a human pyramid, suddenly falls to the ground, and in his fall the chalice he holds breaks. Staring at the chards of the broken chalice, he sings, “I never realized before that broken glass could shine so brightly.” Indeed, that is the message of Easter. The broken, wounded and dead body of Jesus is resurrected, and yet his wounds are still there. In the resurrection God poked a big hole in the darkness, and we now are called to continue to poke holes. It is God, not we, who will finally bring in the fullness of the new creation, but God is even now enlisting our help.
Easter Sunday
Matthew 28: 1-10
When the writer, Robert Louis Stevenson was a child, he was very sickly, and was forced to spend a lot of time in bed. One evening as the darkness began to descend, he climbed out of bed and pressed his face to the glass as he watched the lamplighter go from pole to pole, lighting each lamp. When his nurse entered the room, she was horrified to see him out of bed. Though she ordered him back in bed, he could not take his eyes off the lamplighter. Look, he said, how he is poking holes in the darkness. And in a sense, this is what God is doing at Easter. God is poking holes in the darkness.
Let’s face it: not all the pain and suffering in the world---what is often called darkness--- has been removed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We certainly knew this before, but now we know it even more intimately as the world battles against this terrible virus. Though faith tells us that all manner of things shall finally be made well, the complete victory has not yet been achieved. It is finished, Jesus announced from the cross, but for us on this earth, it is not completely over. God is still doing battle with the forces of evil, though the resurrection tells us victory is assured.
You know how at Christmas time we have these different stories of Jesus’ birth, which are really quite different from one another? In Luke Jesus is born in Bethlehem, in Matthew at home in Nazareth. Luke has the lowly shepherds, while Matthew gives us the wise men. In Luke we have the annunciation made to Mary; in Matthew it is Joseph who hears it first. Well, the same sort of thing is true of the gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection. We simply cannot pretend they are all the same, because each one has its own perspective, born of a particular historical and cultural context. But they do agree on three things: (1) the resurrection occurs in the early morning hours, two days after the crucifixion; (2) Mary Magdalene is present at the tomb and (3) the tomb is empty.
And then come the dissimilarities. In Matthew, Mark and Luke the women arrive at the tomb, early, with the in-breaking of light, either at dawn or immediately after sunrise. John’s Gospel makes a point of telling us it was dark. There is also disagreement about the number and the names of the women, except for Mary Magdalene, who makes it into all four gospel accounts. Matthew names two women, Mary Magdalene and another Mary; Luke names three women and then adds that others accompanied them to the tomb. John has Mary Magdalene go to the tomb alone. Then there is a difference about the placement of the stone at the tomb’s doorway. In three of the gospels the stone has been rolled away before the women arrived. But Matthew is different. As we just heard there is a lot of drama here with an earthquake and an angel rolling away the stone after the women arrive. And with such a dramatic introduction, we might expect Jesus to suddenly be resurrected right before the women’s eyes. But that does not happen. The resurrection has already taken place, in the bleak darkness of the night while the tomb was sealed. Jesus has already left the tomb.
Notice then that the angel gives the women a direct order: Go and tell Jesus’ disciples of his resurrection as well as tell them they will see him not in the capital, the Holy City of Jerusalem, where he was executed, but in Galilee, the place where the whole Jesus enterprise had begun. Now Galilee in Matthew has pride of place. When Jesus began his ministry there, Matthew, quoting from Isaiah, calls it “Galilee of the Gentiles.” Galilee is right on the border, the border between the Jewish world and the gentile one. Isaiah and Matthew both stress that the light that shines in the darkness is a light for all the world. And so, it makes sense that Jesus would not linger in Jewish territory but would meet his disciples in a place that casts a universal message.
The two women who have just been told to go to the disciples with the message then suddenly meet the risen Christ, standing right before them as if to prevent their movement. They recognize him, worship him, even grabbing onto his feet—quite a contrast to the story as it is told in John’s Gospel, where Mary Magdalene who does not initially recognize Jesus, later is commanded not to touch him. Do not cling to me, Jesus warns. But in Matthew there is no such prohibition.
So, what do we make of this story, whose details we cannot harmonize? What truth can we garner? What do we hear from the angel and Jesus that have any relevance to our lives? We hear two words: Go! Tell! The women cannot remain outside the tomb, hanging on to Jesus’ feet. They are to go to the disciples and tell them of the resurrection and the coming meeting in Galilee. They have, in other words, something to do.
Easter then is not a passive believing. We are not exemplary Christians simply because we believe that Jesus was resurrected. No, there is something more, especially in the going and the telling. N.T. Wright, an Anglican priest and a renown biblical scholar, (whom some of us have read in our Sunday morning discussions) calls Easter “a launch pad.” He does not mean that Easter is a launch pad for going to heaven. Notice that Matthew’s story of the resurrection says nothing about life after death or going to heaven. It is the effect of the resurrection on the lives of Jesus’ followers that matters most to Matthew. Jesus is raised, the first fruits of the new creation have begun, and so the followers of Jesus have a job to do. The fullness of the new creation has not yet come. Death and sin still have their say, and so God calls Jesus’ followers to go and tell---proclaim that God in Jesus’ resurrection has poked holes in the darkness.
And we poke holes in many different ways. When we feed the hungry, we poke holes; when we forgo vindictiveness and forgive, another hole is poked, when we recognize our enemies and the harm and evil they do, yet still pray for them and desire full and abundant life for them, we help God poke holes in the darkness. Artists and composers also poke holes as Leonard Bernstein did in his
Mass, composed in memory of John F. Kennedy. The Mass is not only musical; it is also enacted. There is this section, when the priest, who has been lifted up as part of a human pyramid, suddenly falls to the ground, and in his fall the chalice he holds breaks. Staring at the chards of the broken chalice, he sings, “I never realized before that broken glass could shine so brightly.” Indeed, that is the message of Easter. The broken, wounded and dead body of Jesus is resurrected, and yet his wounds are still there. In the resurrection God poked a big hole in the darkness, and we now are called to continue to poke holes. It is God, not we, who will finally bring in the fullness of the new creation, but God is even now enlisting our help.
WHAT IS THAT TO US? by Rev. Sandra L. Olsen 4/5/2020
Palm/Passion Sunday
Matthew 21: 1-11
Matthew 27: 1-5
This Sunday before Easter is known as both Palm and Passion Sunday, though it is true that often churches emphasize the palm part and ignore the passion, which means that for many people, who do not attend services on either Maundy Thursday or Good Friday, they hear nothing of Jesus’ agony and death. They hear the joy and excitement of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and then the following Sunday the victory of the resurrection.
Jesus entered into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, and it is those outside the city walls who welcomed him in joy and jubilation. Those inside the walls are in turmoil, and ask Who is this? It is the outsiders who identify Jesus as a prophet from Galilee. And finally, while Jesus entered Jerusalem through one gate, scholars believe that Pilate entered the city through an opposite gate along with Roman soldiers, riding magnificent war houses. So, we have this contrast not only between the insiders and the outsiders, but also between the donkey and the war horse, and that latter contrast suggests how things will go. Humility will meet power, and for a time it seems that power wins.
Notice what it is that power initially used: betrayal. Jesus is betrayed by one of his own, an insider, Judas Iscariot. And there is something fascinating about Judas, which is why throughout the centuries, artists of all kinds, painters, novelists, poets and film makers--- have let their imaginations run wild with this enigmatic man. In Dante’s Inferno, the first part of his Divine Comedy, Judas is one of three sinners, condemned to the lowest circle of hell, where he is chewed on for all eternity in the mouths of the triple headed Satan. Satan is immobilized in a block of ice, while also chewing on Brutus and Cassius, who plotted against and assassinated Julius Caesar. Betrayal for Dante was the ultimate sin, breaking apart the order of society and family.
When we arrive in the 20th century with the novel The Last Temptation of Christ by the Greek writer, Nikos Kazanedakis, we have a very different portrayal of Judas. Rather than being cast as the ultimate sinner, Judas is heroic, the only disciple strong and resolute enough to carry out the betrayal as part of God’s plan and shoulder the burden of being the man who betrayed Jesus. In Zeffirelli’s movie, Jesus of Nazareth, Judas is portrayed not only as the keeper of the purse, but also as the intellectual, the one who could read and write Greek, Latin and Hebrew. Clearly there is something in this character that engages the human imagination.
Betrayal, after all, is a pretty juicy theme, and perhaps, because we really do not know Judas’ motivations, our imaginations are left wondering. Matthew’s Gospel says nothing about Judas’ character that would make us suspicious of him. He hardly mentions him at all until the betrayal. Was it all for money?
Thirty pieces of silver was a comfortable sum, but it certainly would not have brought Judas great wealth. Some scholars have tried to argue that Judas was a Zealot, calling for the violent overthrow of Rome, and so was greatly disappointed that Jesus did not embrace the same revolutionary fever. When Jesus predicted his betrayal to his disciples, Matthew tells us that one after another asked, “Is it I, Lord?” But Judas put the question this way. “Surely not I, rabbi?” Judas, in other words, recognized Jesus as teacher, but not as Lord, and this would certainly be consistent with one interested in political revolution rather than a spiritual one. But this is all conjecture; no one really knows.
This theme of betrayal by an intimate makes the story all the more tragic and poignant and yes, existentially real. Don’t most of us have some kind of experience with betrayal, starting when we were very young? A sibling betrayed us by tattling to our parents; a secret shared with a friend suddenly became public information. The divorce of parents and the uprooting of a home can leave us with the feeling of having been betrayed. And surely some in this congregation have lived through marital infidelity. I would wager that most of us have lived long enough to know something of betrayal. We have witnessed it; we have been the object of it, and chances are, we have also been the actors. We too have betrayed.
Yet there are times in life, though I think they are more rare than common, when the betrayer recognizes what he or she has done. The defenses and the self-justifications fall away, and the betrayer is left facing the naked truth, as Judas was when he saw that Jesus was condemned. Matthew says that Judas repented and returned the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. But they said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” And he did by hanging himself.
Can you imagine what it is like to recognize the enormity of the betrayal and to have the response be: What is that to me? What is that to us? One of my clergy friends said to me that she thought these words were among the most despairing in the entire Bible. “What is that to us?” Imagine seeing the depths of the wrong you have done and the guilt that rightly is yours to bear and the only response you can get is a disdaining shrug: What is that to us?
You see the enormity of the sin cries out for an enormity of response---perhaps outraged condemnation or deep, compassionate forgiveness, but a cold shrug trivializes everyone, both the sinner and those sinned against. Some of us have been reading The Sunflower, a true story of a young German soldier, ordered to brutally murder Jews, and while dying, he confessed to a Jew, a prisoner in a camp, and be begged that Jewish man for forgiveness. All he received was silence. Perhaps at the time that was the best that could be offered---certainly preferable to What is that to me?
I cannot imagine that if Judas had confessed his sin to Jesus, he would have heard those words. And for Judas that is perhaps the saddest part of the story. He did not know or hear the forgiveness Jesus would announce from the cross, the forgiveness that is the repair of the world, a repair we cannot yet see, but one for which we are fervently called to hope and pray.
Palm/Passion Sunday
Matthew 21: 1-11
Matthew 27: 1-5
This Sunday before Easter is known as both Palm and Passion Sunday, though it is true that often churches emphasize the palm part and ignore the passion, which means that for many people, who do not attend services on either Maundy Thursday or Good Friday, they hear nothing of Jesus’ agony and death. They hear the joy and excitement of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and then the following Sunday the victory of the resurrection.
Jesus entered into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, and it is those outside the city walls who welcomed him in joy and jubilation. Those inside the walls are in turmoil, and ask Who is this? It is the outsiders who identify Jesus as a prophet from Galilee. And finally, while Jesus entered Jerusalem through one gate, scholars believe that Pilate entered the city through an opposite gate along with Roman soldiers, riding magnificent war houses. So, we have this contrast not only between the insiders and the outsiders, but also between the donkey and the war horse, and that latter contrast suggests how things will go. Humility will meet power, and for a time it seems that power wins.
Notice what it is that power initially used: betrayal. Jesus is betrayed by one of his own, an insider, Judas Iscariot. And there is something fascinating about Judas, which is why throughout the centuries, artists of all kinds, painters, novelists, poets and film makers--- have let their imaginations run wild with this enigmatic man. In Dante’s Inferno, the first part of his Divine Comedy, Judas is one of three sinners, condemned to the lowest circle of hell, where he is chewed on for all eternity in the mouths of the triple headed Satan. Satan is immobilized in a block of ice, while also chewing on Brutus and Cassius, who plotted against and assassinated Julius Caesar. Betrayal for Dante was the ultimate sin, breaking apart the order of society and family.
When we arrive in the 20th century with the novel The Last Temptation of Christ by the Greek writer, Nikos Kazanedakis, we have a very different portrayal of Judas. Rather than being cast as the ultimate sinner, Judas is heroic, the only disciple strong and resolute enough to carry out the betrayal as part of God’s plan and shoulder the burden of being the man who betrayed Jesus. In Zeffirelli’s movie, Jesus of Nazareth, Judas is portrayed not only as the keeper of the purse, but also as the intellectual, the one who could read and write Greek, Latin and Hebrew. Clearly there is something in this character that engages the human imagination.
Betrayal, after all, is a pretty juicy theme, and perhaps, because we really do not know Judas’ motivations, our imaginations are left wondering. Matthew’s Gospel says nothing about Judas’ character that would make us suspicious of him. He hardly mentions him at all until the betrayal. Was it all for money?
Thirty pieces of silver was a comfortable sum, but it certainly would not have brought Judas great wealth. Some scholars have tried to argue that Judas was a Zealot, calling for the violent overthrow of Rome, and so was greatly disappointed that Jesus did not embrace the same revolutionary fever. When Jesus predicted his betrayal to his disciples, Matthew tells us that one after another asked, “Is it I, Lord?” But Judas put the question this way. “Surely not I, rabbi?” Judas, in other words, recognized Jesus as teacher, but not as Lord, and this would certainly be consistent with one interested in political revolution rather than a spiritual one. But this is all conjecture; no one really knows.
This theme of betrayal by an intimate makes the story all the more tragic and poignant and yes, existentially real. Don’t most of us have some kind of experience with betrayal, starting when we were very young? A sibling betrayed us by tattling to our parents; a secret shared with a friend suddenly became public information. The divorce of parents and the uprooting of a home can leave us with the feeling of having been betrayed. And surely some in this congregation have lived through marital infidelity. I would wager that most of us have lived long enough to know something of betrayal. We have witnessed it; we have been the object of it, and chances are, we have also been the actors. We too have betrayed.
Yet there are times in life, though I think they are more rare than common, when the betrayer recognizes what he or she has done. The defenses and the self-justifications fall away, and the betrayer is left facing the naked truth, as Judas was when he saw that Jesus was condemned. Matthew says that Judas repented and returned the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. But they said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” And he did by hanging himself.
Can you imagine what it is like to recognize the enormity of the betrayal and to have the response be: What is that to me? What is that to us? One of my clergy friends said to me that she thought these words were among the most despairing in the entire Bible. “What is that to us?” Imagine seeing the depths of the wrong you have done and the guilt that rightly is yours to bear and the only response you can get is a disdaining shrug: What is that to us?
You see the enormity of the sin cries out for an enormity of response---perhaps outraged condemnation or deep, compassionate forgiveness, but a cold shrug trivializes everyone, both the sinner and those sinned against. Some of us have been reading The Sunflower, a true story of a young German soldier, ordered to brutally murder Jews, and while dying, he confessed to a Jew, a prisoner in a camp, and be begged that Jewish man for forgiveness. All he received was silence. Perhaps at the time that was the best that could be offered---certainly preferable to What is that to me?
I cannot imagine that if Judas had confessed his sin to Jesus, he would have heard those words. And for Judas that is perhaps the saddest part of the story. He did not know or hear the forgiveness Jesus would announce from the cross, the forgiveness that is the repair of the world, a repair we cannot yet see, but one for which we are fervently called to hope and pray.
CAN THESE DRY BONES LIVE? by: Rev. Sandra L. Olsen 3/29/20
Ezekiel 37: 1-14
When the southern kingdom of Judah with its capital at Jerusalem, fell to the Babylonians in 587 B. C. E. the leaders, which included the educated and the wealthy, were forced into exile in Babylon. When they arrived, they were neither put in prisons nor refugee camps, nor were they forced into slavery. No, they were free to marry, build homes, work, plant crops and enter into commerce. Since these were among the most talented people in Judah, their talents transferred to Babylon, and so many of them became successful, even wealthy. They also had the freedom of assembly, were allowed them to elect leaders and worship as they pleased. But some had a very hard time worshiping in Babylon, because they could not get over the destruction of their holy city with its exquisite temple. They remembered, and they passed their memories down to the next generations.
But you know how it is: life does go on, and so as the exiled Jews made a new life for themselves in Babylon, many adjusted to their new situation. Most of the original exiles died, and there were those who probably thought they should just take their memories with them. Life in Babylon wasn’t really so bad, was it? So, there was this painful tension between the majority, who adjusted and a much smaller group, who remembered the covenant and what it was God called them to do. After about 53 years the Babylonian empire fell to the Assyrians, and the Jews were offered the chance to go home, back to Jerusalem. But most of them did not want to return. That old dream of being God’s chosen people, the light to the nations, well, for most of them that dream had died a long time ago. They had simply moved on. And so, a majority of the people remained in Babylon. But some, what came to be called “the faithful remnant,” would later return to Jerusalem. Perhaps among the returnees were those who had not been so successful, the inflexible ones, holding on to memories and dreams passed down by parents and grandparents and teachers and prophets and priests, like Ezekiel. And they would remember what Ezekiel had said. They would remember the hope he had tried to give them while they were living in exile in Babylon.
Now Ezekiel was not an easy man; in fact, he could be a real grouch. He had warned the people that they would be severely judged by God for their idolatry, their forgetting their roots and the covenant God had made with them. Ezekiel was no dope; he saw how things were going in Babylon; he saw how many people were adjusting to their new life there, and so his words were tough and pointed. No one who heard him would doubt that he was a man with a mission, a man on fire with a single minded purpose. He told them they were idol worshipers, and their corpses would soon lie beside their idols, and their bones would be scattered around the altars. Undoubtedly many saw Ezekiel as a fanatic, someone bent on a dream that no longer had validity in their new world. It was best to move on, many of them must have thought, because if they continued to cling to the past, they would live in a valley of dried bones. Worse than that they would become those dried up bones. All the flesh, all the meat, all the life giving force would be picked off by carrion birds. Death would swallow the last bit, leaving no scraps---nothing but dried up, bleached out, pure whitened bones.
And in that situation, when the possibility of anything new or vital or life giving looked completely dead, what did God do? God put forth a question. Before the act, there was the question: “Mortal, can these bones live?” And what was Ezekiel supposed to say? How could he possibly know? And so, he was clever enough to put the ball right back into God’s court. “Oh Lord, you know.” And then God told Ezekiel what to say. “Start preaching to these bones,” Ezekiel. “Tell them to hear the Word of the Lord. Tell them that I will cause breath to enter these bones, and they shall live and know that I am the Lord.”
Notice something here. Ezekiel was told to start talking, preaching to those bones before anything had happened to them. God did not first bring the bones back to life, and then have Ezekiel preach. No, the Word came first, because the Word is life; the Word gives life. God’s Word always makes room for hope, and hope has this capacity to bring us back to life. Hope rises up from our bones, and in spite of what looks absurdly impossible, something new comes to life.
You see hope does not bank on the current situation of today. Hope always questions today with the challenge that tomorrow can be different. And of course, if you are among the successful, perhaps like the people who remained behind in Babylon, you do not need or even want to imagine something completely new, because well, you are doing quite well, thank you, and you don’t need to hope for a new beginning. Perhaps in such situations hope is about hanging on to what you already have. It is not about a new beginning. And indeed, I recently read---well before the corona-virus hit--- that people in the upper middle class and beyond have a hard time with hope. Their biggest worry, the article said, is that they will lose ground tomorrow. They feel they are hanging on for dear life. But that is not hope; it’s anxiety. So, it is no surprise that the poor in the gospel always have a special place in God’s promised kingdom, because they are not afraid to hope for something new and radical. Indeed, their lives depend upon tomorrow not looking like today.
Some weeks ago I went to Yale New Haven Hospital to visit my former organist from Center Church in New Haven. Eleanor was in the Intensive Care Unit, and since they were doing a minor procedure I was asked to wait. And while in the waiting area, I met someone who told me in so many words that she felt she was in a valley of dried up bones. That wasn’t the language, she used, but it is what she meant. Her husband was in critical condition, and it was not at all clear he would make it. “When I graduated from college in 1963,” she told me, “I could not find my path. I couldn’t figure out what I really wanted to do. I knew I did not want to be a full time wife and mother, and so I did a lot of different jobs, but none of them satisfied. I was married at 32, old for my generation, a mother of two by the age of 36, and then in my forties in was all about struggling to do all the things middle age people have to do: pay the mortgage, raise kids, drive the kids around to this practice and that one, and then later there were the college bills, and by the time my husband and I were finished with all that, we had become strangers to one another. Nothing bad had happened; no affairs, no big financial mess, no disasters with children. We had shared this life together, and yet, we hardly knew each other. Now, here I am at the age of 78. My husband is probably dying, and what I feel is not this great sadness, but a great emptiness. I feel life has been drained out of me, and I cannot figure out why. I feel I missed something vital, but I don’t know what. And most of all, I do not know what I am supposed to do now.
Have you ever felt like that, as if life has been drained out of you? And then you think to yourself, what am I supposed to do now? We Americans always think we can or should do something. But maybe we can’t. Maybe there are these times when all we can do is hunker down and wait, wait for the question God put to Ezekiel and sometimes puts to us. Can these dry bones live? Can new life come? At times like that, perhaps the only answer we can honestly give is, “O God, you know; only you know.”
Ezekiel 37: 1-14
When the southern kingdom of Judah with its capital at Jerusalem, fell to the Babylonians in 587 B. C. E. the leaders, which included the educated and the wealthy, were forced into exile in Babylon. When they arrived, they were neither put in prisons nor refugee camps, nor were they forced into slavery. No, they were free to marry, build homes, work, plant crops and enter into commerce. Since these were among the most talented people in Judah, their talents transferred to Babylon, and so many of them became successful, even wealthy. They also had the freedom of assembly, were allowed them to elect leaders and worship as they pleased. But some had a very hard time worshiping in Babylon, because they could not get over the destruction of their holy city with its exquisite temple. They remembered, and they passed their memories down to the next generations.
But you know how it is: life does go on, and so as the exiled Jews made a new life for themselves in Babylon, many adjusted to their new situation. Most of the original exiles died, and there were those who probably thought they should just take their memories with them. Life in Babylon wasn’t really so bad, was it? So, there was this painful tension between the majority, who adjusted and a much smaller group, who remembered the covenant and what it was God called them to do. After about 53 years the Babylonian empire fell to the Assyrians, and the Jews were offered the chance to go home, back to Jerusalem. But most of them did not want to return. That old dream of being God’s chosen people, the light to the nations, well, for most of them that dream had died a long time ago. They had simply moved on. And so, a majority of the people remained in Babylon. But some, what came to be called “the faithful remnant,” would later return to Jerusalem. Perhaps among the returnees were those who had not been so successful, the inflexible ones, holding on to memories and dreams passed down by parents and grandparents and teachers and prophets and priests, like Ezekiel. And they would remember what Ezekiel had said. They would remember the hope he had tried to give them while they were living in exile in Babylon.
Now Ezekiel was not an easy man; in fact, he could be a real grouch. He had warned the people that they would be severely judged by God for their idolatry, their forgetting their roots and the covenant God had made with them. Ezekiel was no dope; he saw how things were going in Babylon; he saw how many people were adjusting to their new life there, and so his words were tough and pointed. No one who heard him would doubt that he was a man with a mission, a man on fire with a single minded purpose. He told them they were idol worshipers, and their corpses would soon lie beside their idols, and their bones would be scattered around the altars. Undoubtedly many saw Ezekiel as a fanatic, someone bent on a dream that no longer had validity in their new world. It was best to move on, many of them must have thought, because if they continued to cling to the past, they would live in a valley of dried bones. Worse than that they would become those dried up bones. All the flesh, all the meat, all the life giving force would be picked off by carrion birds. Death would swallow the last bit, leaving no scraps---nothing but dried up, bleached out, pure whitened bones.
And in that situation, when the possibility of anything new or vital or life giving looked completely dead, what did God do? God put forth a question. Before the act, there was the question: “Mortal, can these bones live?” And what was Ezekiel supposed to say? How could he possibly know? And so, he was clever enough to put the ball right back into God’s court. “Oh Lord, you know.” And then God told Ezekiel what to say. “Start preaching to these bones,” Ezekiel. “Tell them to hear the Word of the Lord. Tell them that I will cause breath to enter these bones, and they shall live and know that I am the Lord.”
Notice something here. Ezekiel was told to start talking, preaching to those bones before anything had happened to them. God did not first bring the bones back to life, and then have Ezekiel preach. No, the Word came first, because the Word is life; the Word gives life. God’s Word always makes room for hope, and hope has this capacity to bring us back to life. Hope rises up from our bones, and in spite of what looks absurdly impossible, something new comes to life.
You see hope does not bank on the current situation of today. Hope always questions today with the challenge that tomorrow can be different. And of course, if you are among the successful, perhaps like the people who remained behind in Babylon, you do not need or even want to imagine something completely new, because well, you are doing quite well, thank you, and you don’t need to hope for a new beginning. Perhaps in such situations hope is about hanging on to what you already have. It is not about a new beginning. And indeed, I recently read---well before the corona-virus hit--- that people in the upper middle class and beyond have a hard time with hope. Their biggest worry, the article said, is that they will lose ground tomorrow. They feel they are hanging on for dear life. But that is not hope; it’s anxiety. So, it is no surprise that the poor in the gospel always have a special place in God’s promised kingdom, because they are not afraid to hope for something new and radical. Indeed, their lives depend upon tomorrow not looking like today.
Some weeks ago I went to Yale New Haven Hospital to visit my former organist from Center Church in New Haven. Eleanor was in the Intensive Care Unit, and since they were doing a minor procedure I was asked to wait. And while in the waiting area, I met someone who told me in so many words that she felt she was in a valley of dried up bones. That wasn’t the language, she used, but it is what she meant. Her husband was in critical condition, and it was not at all clear he would make it. “When I graduated from college in 1963,” she told me, “I could not find my path. I couldn’t figure out what I really wanted to do. I knew I did not want to be a full time wife and mother, and so I did a lot of different jobs, but none of them satisfied. I was married at 32, old for my generation, a mother of two by the age of 36, and then in my forties in was all about struggling to do all the things middle age people have to do: pay the mortgage, raise kids, drive the kids around to this practice and that one, and then later there were the college bills, and by the time my husband and I were finished with all that, we had become strangers to one another. Nothing bad had happened; no affairs, no big financial mess, no disasters with children. We had shared this life together, and yet, we hardly knew each other. Now, here I am at the age of 78. My husband is probably dying, and what I feel is not this great sadness, but a great emptiness. I feel life has been drained out of me, and I cannot figure out why. I feel I missed something vital, but I don’t know what. And most of all, I do not know what I am supposed to do now.
Have you ever felt like that, as if life has been drained out of you? And then you think to yourself, what am I supposed to do now? We Americans always think we can or should do something. But maybe we can’t. Maybe there are these times when all we can do is hunker down and wait, wait for the question God put to Ezekiel and sometimes puts to us. Can these dry bones live? Can new life come? At times like that, perhaps the only answer we can honestly give is, “O God, you know; only you know.”
“Sometimes All I Want Is Comfort" by Rev. Sandra L. Olsen 3/22/2020
Psalm 23
John 9: 1-41
“God judges creatures with love, while Satan judges them with hatred and envy.” So said Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor and theologian, who was hanged by the personal order of Hitler on April 9, 1945 for his participation in an assassination plot against the Fuhrer. God judges with love, but human beings (turning to Satan rather than God) judge with hatred and envy. And so, are we really surprised that Jesus’ healing of a blind man on the Sabbath should lead to a debate about sin? Jesus sees the man; others see the sin. Jesus is the light of the world, but people are blind to that light. Jesus’ mission is to heal, while the disciples and especially the Pharisees look to assign guilt and blame.
Immediately after the healing the Pharisees name Jesus as a sinner, because he dared to heal (work) on the Sabbath. Sure, some of them had their doubts, wondering how a sinner could do such marvelous things, but their pondering did not carry much weight. It’s pathetic that no one (not even the man’s parents) is focused on the healing. They all have their own worries and concerns, some worrying about being expelled from the synagogue, others doubting the man’s blindness.
What is at stake here is a particular understanding of the kind of moral universe humans inhabit---a place where there is a direct relationship between sin and life circumstances. People think the sinful should suffer and the good should prosper but notice that Jesus refuses to get drawn into that debate. In fact, he refuses in this story to label anyone as a sinner. True, his harshest comments are reserved for the Pharisees, who think that as religious leaders they can clearly see the moral order. But they are the ones who are blind, spiritually blind, neither knowing nor seeing the light of the world, who stands right before them. Notice what they say and do to the healed man, when he fails to agree with them that Jesus is a sinner. “You were born entirely in sin and you are trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.
These particular Pharisees were convinced that if someone is born blind, surely there must be a reason: someone, somehow, somewhere must have done something wrong. It’s tit for tat, and God keeps score. In the past week with the coronavirus beginning its ravages across the country, I have read that some preachers are insisting it is God’s punishment for this or that sin---abortion and homosexuality usually go to the top of the list, but they conveniently forget the sin of 100,000 homeless children in the New York City Public Schools, which we as a nation are apparently all too willing to tolerate. When any of us thinks we know how God judges, we fall into spiritual arrogance. And perhaps that arrogance is really a cover up for fear. People are afraid, desperate for comfort and certainty in a world that rarely yields either.
At my former church in New Haven I had a parishioner come to me and say, “Your sermons always give me much to ponder. You bring up so many questions, which cannot really be answered. And I find myself thinking, I don’t really expect answers from God, but I do want comfort, and now I am beginning to wonder, if that is too much for me to ask.”
No, it is not. Comfort is a human need, and perhaps this need has something to do with why the lectionary choices for this Sunday paired together the story from John with the 23rd Psalm. The Gospel is good news, but it does not always strike us as immediately comforting. Today’s story leaves us with the discomfort of considering our own blindness. And our questions about why bad things happen---why some suffer blindness or other calamities---are not answered. But then explanations are rarely comforting. Presence gives comfort, and this is what Psalm 23 offers.
Last month I conducted a graveside service, and when I first spoke with the daughter of the deceased man, she told me her father had left instructions that he wanted two readings read at his grave. The first was a short poem by Jane Kenyon called Otherwise, which ends with this line:
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know
It will be otherwise.
His second choice was the 23rd Psalm. “My father,” his Quaker daughter said, “was an agnostic. He always insisted he was too much of a realist to be a believer, but too humble to be an atheist, and so he lived between these two poles. “A man of great energy, he crammed in as much as he could before the clock ran down. He knew that one day “it would be otherwise.” And then she took out his handwritten note, which read, “Although I do not believe, I hope that goodness and mercy shall follow me into and beyond the grave, and that I shall dwell in that goodness and mercy forever.”
His two daughters and wife were shocked that he chose the psalm, but I told them I thought the psalm was indeed for realists as well as the faithful.” It presents life as a paradox; there is goodness, on the one hand, and yet we are challenged by the world’s evil. Yes, God restores the soul, but that means that something has happened which cries out for restoration. God is with us when we walk through the darkest valley of death’s shadow, but we still have to walk through that valley. A table is prepared for us, but it is prepared in the presence of our enemies, which means that enemies do not disappear.
The 23rd Psalm is a psalm of presence, and that is why people love it. People can’t prove the presence, but they have known it in the darkest valleys of life as the blind man knew it and saw it, when he was healed of his blindness. And when the presence is known, seen or felt, explanations and beliefs don’t matter as much as we think they do. What matters is that presence, which mysteriously holds us up even in the darkest valley.
Psalm 23
John 9: 1-41
“God judges creatures with love, while Satan judges them with hatred and envy.” So said Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor and theologian, who was hanged by the personal order of Hitler on April 9, 1945 for his participation in an assassination plot against the Fuhrer. God judges with love, but human beings (turning to Satan rather than God) judge with hatred and envy. And so, are we really surprised that Jesus’ healing of a blind man on the Sabbath should lead to a debate about sin? Jesus sees the man; others see the sin. Jesus is the light of the world, but people are blind to that light. Jesus’ mission is to heal, while the disciples and especially the Pharisees look to assign guilt and blame.
Immediately after the healing the Pharisees name Jesus as a sinner, because he dared to heal (work) on the Sabbath. Sure, some of them had their doubts, wondering how a sinner could do such marvelous things, but their pondering did not carry much weight. It’s pathetic that no one (not even the man’s parents) is focused on the healing. They all have their own worries and concerns, some worrying about being expelled from the synagogue, others doubting the man’s blindness.
What is at stake here is a particular understanding of the kind of moral universe humans inhabit---a place where there is a direct relationship between sin and life circumstances. People think the sinful should suffer and the good should prosper but notice that Jesus refuses to get drawn into that debate. In fact, he refuses in this story to label anyone as a sinner. True, his harshest comments are reserved for the Pharisees, who think that as religious leaders they can clearly see the moral order. But they are the ones who are blind, spiritually blind, neither knowing nor seeing the light of the world, who stands right before them. Notice what they say and do to the healed man, when he fails to agree with them that Jesus is a sinner. “You were born entirely in sin and you are trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.
These particular Pharisees were convinced that if someone is born blind, surely there must be a reason: someone, somehow, somewhere must have done something wrong. It’s tit for tat, and God keeps score. In the past week with the coronavirus beginning its ravages across the country, I have read that some preachers are insisting it is God’s punishment for this or that sin---abortion and homosexuality usually go to the top of the list, but they conveniently forget the sin of 100,000 homeless children in the New York City Public Schools, which we as a nation are apparently all too willing to tolerate. When any of us thinks we know how God judges, we fall into spiritual arrogance. And perhaps that arrogance is really a cover up for fear. People are afraid, desperate for comfort and certainty in a world that rarely yields either.
At my former church in New Haven I had a parishioner come to me and say, “Your sermons always give me much to ponder. You bring up so many questions, which cannot really be answered. And I find myself thinking, I don’t really expect answers from God, but I do want comfort, and now I am beginning to wonder, if that is too much for me to ask.”
No, it is not. Comfort is a human need, and perhaps this need has something to do with why the lectionary choices for this Sunday paired together the story from John with the 23rd Psalm. The Gospel is good news, but it does not always strike us as immediately comforting. Today’s story leaves us with the discomfort of considering our own blindness. And our questions about why bad things happen---why some suffer blindness or other calamities---are not answered. But then explanations are rarely comforting. Presence gives comfort, and this is what Psalm 23 offers.
Last month I conducted a graveside service, and when I first spoke with the daughter of the deceased man, she told me her father had left instructions that he wanted two readings read at his grave. The first was a short poem by Jane Kenyon called Otherwise, which ends with this line:
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know
It will be otherwise.
His second choice was the 23rd Psalm. “My father,” his Quaker daughter said, “was an agnostic. He always insisted he was too much of a realist to be a believer, but too humble to be an atheist, and so he lived between these two poles. “A man of great energy, he crammed in as much as he could before the clock ran down. He knew that one day “it would be otherwise.” And then she took out his handwritten note, which read, “Although I do not believe, I hope that goodness and mercy shall follow me into and beyond the grave, and that I shall dwell in that goodness and mercy forever.”
His two daughters and wife were shocked that he chose the psalm, but I told them I thought the psalm was indeed for realists as well as the faithful.” It presents life as a paradox; there is goodness, on the one hand, and yet we are challenged by the world’s evil. Yes, God restores the soul, but that means that something has happened which cries out for restoration. God is with us when we walk through the darkest valley of death’s shadow, but we still have to walk through that valley. A table is prepared for us, but it is prepared in the presence of our enemies, which means that enemies do not disappear.
The 23rd Psalm is a psalm of presence, and that is why people love it. People can’t prove the presence, but they have known it in the darkest valleys of life as the blind man knew it and saw it, when he was healed of his blindness. And when the presence is known, seen or felt, explanations and beliefs don’t matter as much as we think they do. What matters is that presence, which mysteriously holds us up even in the darkest valley.
THE MEETING: A SAMARITAN WOMAN SPEAKS by: Rev. Sandra L. Olsen 3/15/2020
John 4: 5-42
I understand that this is Women’s History Month, and last Sunday was International Women’s Day, when people were paying particular attention to women---their stories and aspirations. So with that in mind, it does make sense for me to be here---to tell you my story. Oh, it was such a long time ago, but how well I remember. And why shouldn’t I remember the details? It was, after all, completely unheard of for a Jewish man to speak to a Samaritan, and a woman, why that was even more outrageous. Jewish men did not even speak to Jewish women in public. That was just the way it was; still is, even today, in some parts of the Middle East.
But before I begin with the specifics of my story, I want you to understand something about the enmity between the Samaritans and the Jews. You probably realize that the two groups did not get along, and surely you all know and love the story from Luke’s gospel about the Good Samaritan, who helped the beaten and bleeding Jew, when so many other respectable Jewish leaders passed him by.
Well, memory goes back very far in the Middle East, and so the trouble began in 722 BC, when the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel, whose capital was Samaria. Samaritans became the people who intermarried with the pagan invaders, and though Samaritans and Jews both read the same scriptures and were waiting and hoping for the same Messiah, the Jews came to view us as impure, what some people might insultingly call, half breeds. Centuries later, after the Babylonian exile, when the Jews returned to Judah, the southern kingdom, the Samaritans of the northern kingdom did not welcome them home, and so to distinguish ourselves from the Jews, we Samaritans built a rival temple on Mount Gerizim. That is the holy mountain, we insisted, not Mount Sinai. Well, the Jews later destroyed our temple, which hardly made things easier between the two groups. And so, it has gone and continues to go. You can still find some Samaritans today living in Tel Aviv and Nablus, located in what is now the West Bank. But enough of history; now to my story.
It was noon, when I went to draw water from the well. The sun was already high in the sky, and it was hot, very hot. I knew I would be alone, since women always went to the well in the early morning hours before the heat of the day. They would go back and forth, usually a few times in the morning, and then later in the day, in the cool of the late afternoon, they would go again. I was careful to avoid those times, since I did not enjoy the stares and the nasty asides, usually uttered under the breath. Few would ever have the nerve to directly insult me.
It is true; my life hardly conformed to the pattern of womanhood laid down by either Samaritan or Jewish custom, and so it was simply easier for me to avoid potentially unpleasant situations. The man I was living with at the time was not my husband; I had already been married five times, but notice, Jesus said nothing about why I had been married five times. Women, you must remember, could not divorce on their own, so I was left widowed a few times and then men divorced me three times. And why was I divorced? Isn’t it interesting that whenever there is something unusual about a woman’s status, the assumption is made that she must be guilty of some kind of sexual impropriety? Mary Magdalene is a case in point. She is accused of being a prostitute; though nowhere in the scripture does it say that. It is an assumption, just as there is an assumption that I was guilty of some misdeed. My guilt, my crime was that I was barren, and in my day barrenness was always the woman’s fault, a curse pronounced by God. Well, after five husbands the last thing I thought I needed was another one, another man divorcing me because I was cursed.
So here I was at Jacob’s well, and this man, obviously a Jewish man, asked me for water. I thought it strange he was even here; most Jews traveling between Judah in the south and Galilee in the north would avoid going through Samaria by crossing the Jordan River to the east. But not this man. There he stood, looking hot and thirsty, requesting from me a drink of water. It’s strange, but as soon as he spoke, I felt this connecting spark. I mean here was a man, willing to break rules, and since I too was a rule breaker, my whole attention suddenly became focused, sharply focused. Though he asked me for water, he carried no cup. Did he expect me to give him one? But that would be another unclean act, and so, though shocked, I was also immensely curious. What is he really up to, I pondered? What does he really want, I wondered?
He said he wanted water, but do you realize that in your scriptures there are very few examples of Jesus asking anyone for anything. And so, I simply asked him how it was that he, a Jew, would ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink of water. But instead of answering my question, instead of taking water from me, he spoke to me in a kind of riddle, telling me that I would be wise to pay attention to his identity. If I only knew who he was, he said, I would ask him for living water. But what was that? I thought he meant fresh, flowing water as opposed to still water. And when he told me I would never be thirsty again, I thought he meant I would never have to return to the well to fill my jug. What a relief that would be. Do you have any idea how heavy water is? One pint weighs one pound, so a 5 gallon jug of water weighs a staggering 40 pounds, and most households would need two or three times that amount for one day.
At the time I did not understand that Jesus was offering to open me up to full and abundant life. I thought his offer was all about making my chores easier. Now, when I look back, I realize this is often how it is in human life. God offers us something big, something that can radically change the course of our lives, and we are ready to settle for far less, like lessening our chores. That’s what the temptation story was all about a few weeks ago. Jesus was offered some pretty big things by Satan, like turning stones into bread, but if he had fallen for that, he would have settled for far less than he was called to be. And he knew it; he knew it even then, while most of us just do not see and understand at the time. We are all like those Israelite's, moaning and complaining to Moses as they wondered, Is God with us or not? All they wanted was water to drink. They had no idea that God was with them on a journey toward living water.
So, they settled, and we settle, not unlike the poor alcoholic who settles for a bottle of booze rather than facing the pain of his life. Fear holds him or her back, just as fear often holds all of us in its nasty grip as we realize there is something to be gained, but also something to be lost. And it is that losing which is the fearful thing.
Oh, I eventually lost my place, a place I had made for myself as the outsider, looking down on people whom I thought were overly conventional and cowardly. But I came to understand that I too was playing it safe, always at a distance from everyone else, where no one could hurt me or make demands on me. I was so self-sufficient, until step by step, I moved outside the little box I had comfortably made into a wider and bigger world. And that is what living water is for; that is what eternal life is about. We cannot reduce eternity to a state after death. It is also about how we live now, how and what we choose to do and what and whom we choose to love. Eternal life is indeed about life, full and abundant life. That is what living water is; that is what it means to drink from the cup Jesus offers. And so, the offer is always being made. We can always begin again, always start over. And when fear would hold us back, we can reach out our hands and say, Jesus, give me your living water. And he does and he will---even if it does not always come in the form we want or expect.
John 4: 5-42
I understand that this is Women’s History Month, and last Sunday was International Women’s Day, when people were paying particular attention to women---their stories and aspirations. So with that in mind, it does make sense for me to be here---to tell you my story. Oh, it was such a long time ago, but how well I remember. And why shouldn’t I remember the details? It was, after all, completely unheard of for a Jewish man to speak to a Samaritan, and a woman, why that was even more outrageous. Jewish men did not even speak to Jewish women in public. That was just the way it was; still is, even today, in some parts of the Middle East.
But before I begin with the specifics of my story, I want you to understand something about the enmity between the Samaritans and the Jews. You probably realize that the two groups did not get along, and surely you all know and love the story from Luke’s gospel about the Good Samaritan, who helped the beaten and bleeding Jew, when so many other respectable Jewish leaders passed him by.
Well, memory goes back very far in the Middle East, and so the trouble began in 722 BC, when the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel, whose capital was Samaria. Samaritans became the people who intermarried with the pagan invaders, and though Samaritans and Jews both read the same scriptures and were waiting and hoping for the same Messiah, the Jews came to view us as impure, what some people might insultingly call, half breeds. Centuries later, after the Babylonian exile, when the Jews returned to Judah, the southern kingdom, the Samaritans of the northern kingdom did not welcome them home, and so to distinguish ourselves from the Jews, we Samaritans built a rival temple on Mount Gerizim. That is the holy mountain, we insisted, not Mount Sinai. Well, the Jews later destroyed our temple, which hardly made things easier between the two groups. And so, it has gone and continues to go. You can still find some Samaritans today living in Tel Aviv and Nablus, located in what is now the West Bank. But enough of history; now to my story.
It was noon, when I went to draw water from the well. The sun was already high in the sky, and it was hot, very hot. I knew I would be alone, since women always went to the well in the early morning hours before the heat of the day. They would go back and forth, usually a few times in the morning, and then later in the day, in the cool of the late afternoon, they would go again. I was careful to avoid those times, since I did not enjoy the stares and the nasty asides, usually uttered under the breath. Few would ever have the nerve to directly insult me.
It is true; my life hardly conformed to the pattern of womanhood laid down by either Samaritan or Jewish custom, and so it was simply easier for me to avoid potentially unpleasant situations. The man I was living with at the time was not my husband; I had already been married five times, but notice, Jesus said nothing about why I had been married five times. Women, you must remember, could not divorce on their own, so I was left widowed a few times and then men divorced me three times. And why was I divorced? Isn’t it interesting that whenever there is something unusual about a woman’s status, the assumption is made that she must be guilty of some kind of sexual impropriety? Mary Magdalene is a case in point. She is accused of being a prostitute; though nowhere in the scripture does it say that. It is an assumption, just as there is an assumption that I was guilty of some misdeed. My guilt, my crime was that I was barren, and in my day barrenness was always the woman’s fault, a curse pronounced by God. Well, after five husbands the last thing I thought I needed was another one, another man divorcing me because I was cursed.
So here I was at Jacob’s well, and this man, obviously a Jewish man, asked me for water. I thought it strange he was even here; most Jews traveling between Judah in the south and Galilee in the north would avoid going through Samaria by crossing the Jordan River to the east. But not this man. There he stood, looking hot and thirsty, requesting from me a drink of water. It’s strange, but as soon as he spoke, I felt this connecting spark. I mean here was a man, willing to break rules, and since I too was a rule breaker, my whole attention suddenly became focused, sharply focused. Though he asked me for water, he carried no cup. Did he expect me to give him one? But that would be another unclean act, and so, though shocked, I was also immensely curious. What is he really up to, I pondered? What does he really want, I wondered?
He said he wanted water, but do you realize that in your scriptures there are very few examples of Jesus asking anyone for anything. And so, I simply asked him how it was that he, a Jew, would ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink of water. But instead of answering my question, instead of taking water from me, he spoke to me in a kind of riddle, telling me that I would be wise to pay attention to his identity. If I only knew who he was, he said, I would ask him for living water. But what was that? I thought he meant fresh, flowing water as opposed to still water. And when he told me I would never be thirsty again, I thought he meant I would never have to return to the well to fill my jug. What a relief that would be. Do you have any idea how heavy water is? One pint weighs one pound, so a 5 gallon jug of water weighs a staggering 40 pounds, and most households would need two or three times that amount for one day.
At the time I did not understand that Jesus was offering to open me up to full and abundant life. I thought his offer was all about making my chores easier. Now, when I look back, I realize this is often how it is in human life. God offers us something big, something that can radically change the course of our lives, and we are ready to settle for far less, like lessening our chores. That’s what the temptation story was all about a few weeks ago. Jesus was offered some pretty big things by Satan, like turning stones into bread, but if he had fallen for that, he would have settled for far less than he was called to be. And he knew it; he knew it even then, while most of us just do not see and understand at the time. We are all like those Israelite's, moaning and complaining to Moses as they wondered, Is God with us or not? All they wanted was water to drink. They had no idea that God was with them on a journey toward living water.
So, they settled, and we settle, not unlike the poor alcoholic who settles for a bottle of booze rather than facing the pain of his life. Fear holds him or her back, just as fear often holds all of us in its nasty grip as we realize there is something to be gained, but also something to be lost. And it is that losing which is the fearful thing.
Oh, I eventually lost my place, a place I had made for myself as the outsider, looking down on people whom I thought were overly conventional and cowardly. But I came to understand that I too was playing it safe, always at a distance from everyone else, where no one could hurt me or make demands on me. I was so self-sufficient, until step by step, I moved outside the little box I had comfortably made into a wider and bigger world. And that is what living water is for; that is what eternal life is about. We cannot reduce eternity to a state after death. It is also about how we live now, how and what we choose to do and what and whom we choose to love. Eternal life is indeed about life, full and abundant life. That is what living water is; that is what it means to drink from the cup Jesus offers. And so, the offer is always being made. We can always begin again, always start over. And when fear would hold us back, we can reach out our hands and say, Jesus, give me your living water. And he does and he will---even if it does not always come in the form we want or expect.
COMING TO JESUS BY NIGHT by: Rev. Sandra L. Olsen 3/8/2020
Genesis 12: 1-4a
John 3: 1-17
Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night. It’s dark, vision is impaired in these days long before electricity, and for the writer of this gospel night and dark symbolize blindness and misunderstanding. Yet this is when Nicodemus, a Pharisee and leader of the Jews, comes to Jesus. Though this is early in John’s gospel, (only chapter 3) already Jesus has created opposition. Unlike Mathew, Mark and Luke, who show Jesus throwing the money changers out of the Temple right before his arrest and execution, John puts that story at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, in chapter 2 in order to make clear Jesus’ identity. His authority, in other words, extends over and beyond the Temple. The temple can be destroyed, Jesus told the crowd, and in three days “I will rebuild it”---a reference to his resurrection on the third day.
Now Nicodemus, who was a Pharisee, would not have found it beneficial to be associated with such a radical. But he was curious, curious enough to come to Jesus by night. He had seen Jesus perform signs and wonders. In chapter two we are told that people believed in Jesus because of such signs, but it also says at the chapter’s end that Jesus would not entrust himself to those who believed in him because of signs. And then chapter three begins with Nicodemus coming to Jesus by night.
Notice that Nicodemus immediately tells Jesus that he believes in him precisely because of those signs. No one can do these things apart from the presence of God, he told Jesus. But to be impressed by the signs is to be impressed by the wrong things; the signs are not the right reason for believing. If Nicodemus came with questions, he did not get the chance to ask them, because immediately Jesus launches into a theological declaration. He tells Nicodemus that no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above. The Greek word, translated as above, can also mean again or anew. Nicodemus takes it to mean again, which is why he asks the question about entering into his mother’s womb for a second birth. Jesus then tries to explain the difference between spirit and flesh, but still Nicodemus does not get it. How can these things be, Nicodemus ponders, and Jesus simply responds by asking, “Are you a teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” And then Jesus declares what is perhaps the most memorized biblical verse in the New Testament: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
We don’t hear anything more from Nicodemus until chapter 7, when he offers a defense of Jesus by reminding his fellow Pharisees that before they can condemn Jesus, their law demands he be fairly tried. Nicodemus appears again, when after Jesus’ death, he goes to his tomb with an excessive load of spices. So while he is a believer, he is an unsure and hesitant one, who is also impressed by the wrong things---not unlike many of us. We believe, but our reasons for believing may be no better than Nicodemus’ reasons. He, at least, witnessed signs and wonders. What do we offer as our reasons for believing in Jesus? Indeed, why are we here in church? Is it because we love the peaceful beauty of this place? Or the intimate trust that develops among members? Is it because we want to learn something new about the Bible, and see it applied to real life, so we can understand our own lives in a different way? Certainly not bad reasons to come to church, but how about the one that goes to the heart of the matter: Are we here, because we want to become disciples? Are we here to follow Jesus? I don’t mean follow perfectly, because perfection is not in our grasp, but do we want to follow more faithfully today than we did yesterday? Do we want to be changed by our encounter with the living Christ?
The gospel is really a kind of lens, and when we put it on, our vision, our view of the world does not look the same. Or at least it should not look the same, and if it does, then something is wrong. When we look through the lens of the gospel, we should not see our enemies the same way. Oh yes, we will still have enemies, but we can’t hate them and claim to be following Christ. We cannot put on the lens of the gospel and see a world, where torture and execution are acceptable. We can’t look at the addicted or the homeless, or the poor as if they deserve their lot in life, because some of them perhaps have made poor decisions. Oh, we can and we sometimes do these things, but we should not fool ourselves into believing that this is how Christ taught us to see. Jesus never once said, “God helps those who help themselves.” On the contrary, he taught, God so loved the world—the whole, inclusive world--- that he gave his Son for the world’s benefit that the world through him might be saved.
Some years ago, when I was at Princeton Theological Seminary for a course, I attended Sunday worship at Nassau Presbyterian Church. It is a lovely building with a strong membership, including many faculty and staff from the University and Seminary, and the preaching is, as you might expect, pretty intellectual. Well, after the service I was standing around in the social room, when this man began to speak with me. I told him the sermon gave me a lot to ponder. “Most likely,” he said, “but I have not understood a sermon here in 25 years. It seems that everyone here is either a professor or a lawyer, or some other highly educated professional, so the ministers tend to preach to them. I’m just a regular guy; I have a very successful house painting business, so I can afford to live in this upscale town, but I don’t have the education that most members have.
“Then why do you stay,” I asked? “What do you get out of it?”
“Oh, I will never leave this church,” he continued, “because it’s the place where I learned to be a better Christian. You see, some years ago, we started these visits to the prison, and so I thought, well, this is something Jesus said we should do, so I will try it. I really wasn’t that enthusiastic, but they needed someone with a van to drive and, so I volunteered. I started visiting people I could have so easily hated---like this rapist. Hey, I have three daughters. What was I doing talking to a man like this? But in time after listening to his story as well as the stories of other prisoners, I began to see them differently from the way the world sees them. And slowly it dawned on me that the gospel is true--- whatever we do to the least of these we do to Christ. I even gave some ex-prisoners jobs. There was this one tough guy, who disappointed me, when he stole money from a home we were painting, but you know something, against reason, I didn’t fire him. I prayed about it, and asked God to help me make the right decision. If I fired him, what would he do? Would he be able to get another job, or would he choose crime? So, I told him I would pay back the money, and I wanted him to continue working for me. I expect you to pay me back, I told him. He was shocked; he thought I had lost my mind. Well, so did my wife. But I felt this is what Jesus would have me do. That was 15 years ago, and that guy is my best worker. No, I may not understand the sermons here, but I have begun to understand what Christ would have me do. That’s why I am here. That’s why I stay.”
The Church is the body of Christ, and we are called to be part of that body. And we might be attracted to a particular church for all kinds of reasons—like my former church in New Haven, which boasted a stunning sanctuary, an exquisite hand built Fisk organ, a talented paid choir and a long and proud history, all of which were wonderful gifts. But none of that should be the main reason for the church. We are in church to be transformed into disciples, to help one another practice Christian faith, which means learning to see differently and act differently from how the world sees and acts. The world does not set the standards. Christ does, and we are called to follow him---although we sometimes stumble after him, or like Nicodemus, impressed by the wrong things, we come to Jesus by night. But at least we come, and that is a beginning.
Genesis 12: 1-4a
John 3: 1-17
Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night. It’s dark, vision is impaired in these days long before electricity, and for the writer of this gospel night and dark symbolize blindness and misunderstanding. Yet this is when Nicodemus, a Pharisee and leader of the Jews, comes to Jesus. Though this is early in John’s gospel, (only chapter 3) already Jesus has created opposition. Unlike Mathew, Mark and Luke, who show Jesus throwing the money changers out of the Temple right before his arrest and execution, John puts that story at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, in chapter 2 in order to make clear Jesus’ identity. His authority, in other words, extends over and beyond the Temple. The temple can be destroyed, Jesus told the crowd, and in three days “I will rebuild it”---a reference to his resurrection on the third day.
Now Nicodemus, who was a Pharisee, would not have found it beneficial to be associated with such a radical. But he was curious, curious enough to come to Jesus by night. He had seen Jesus perform signs and wonders. In chapter two we are told that people believed in Jesus because of such signs, but it also says at the chapter’s end that Jesus would not entrust himself to those who believed in him because of signs. And then chapter three begins with Nicodemus coming to Jesus by night.
Notice that Nicodemus immediately tells Jesus that he believes in him precisely because of those signs. No one can do these things apart from the presence of God, he told Jesus. But to be impressed by the signs is to be impressed by the wrong things; the signs are not the right reason for believing. If Nicodemus came with questions, he did not get the chance to ask them, because immediately Jesus launches into a theological declaration. He tells Nicodemus that no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above. The Greek word, translated as above, can also mean again or anew. Nicodemus takes it to mean again, which is why he asks the question about entering into his mother’s womb for a second birth. Jesus then tries to explain the difference between spirit and flesh, but still Nicodemus does not get it. How can these things be, Nicodemus ponders, and Jesus simply responds by asking, “Are you a teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” And then Jesus declares what is perhaps the most memorized biblical verse in the New Testament: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
We don’t hear anything more from Nicodemus until chapter 7, when he offers a defense of Jesus by reminding his fellow Pharisees that before they can condemn Jesus, their law demands he be fairly tried. Nicodemus appears again, when after Jesus’ death, he goes to his tomb with an excessive load of spices. So while he is a believer, he is an unsure and hesitant one, who is also impressed by the wrong things---not unlike many of us. We believe, but our reasons for believing may be no better than Nicodemus’ reasons. He, at least, witnessed signs and wonders. What do we offer as our reasons for believing in Jesus? Indeed, why are we here in church? Is it because we love the peaceful beauty of this place? Or the intimate trust that develops among members? Is it because we want to learn something new about the Bible, and see it applied to real life, so we can understand our own lives in a different way? Certainly not bad reasons to come to church, but how about the one that goes to the heart of the matter: Are we here, because we want to become disciples? Are we here to follow Jesus? I don’t mean follow perfectly, because perfection is not in our grasp, but do we want to follow more faithfully today than we did yesterday? Do we want to be changed by our encounter with the living Christ?
The gospel is really a kind of lens, and when we put it on, our vision, our view of the world does not look the same. Or at least it should not look the same, and if it does, then something is wrong. When we look through the lens of the gospel, we should not see our enemies the same way. Oh yes, we will still have enemies, but we can’t hate them and claim to be following Christ. We cannot put on the lens of the gospel and see a world, where torture and execution are acceptable. We can’t look at the addicted or the homeless, or the poor as if they deserve their lot in life, because some of them perhaps have made poor decisions. Oh, we can and we sometimes do these things, but we should not fool ourselves into believing that this is how Christ taught us to see. Jesus never once said, “God helps those who help themselves.” On the contrary, he taught, God so loved the world—the whole, inclusive world--- that he gave his Son for the world’s benefit that the world through him might be saved.
Some years ago, when I was at Princeton Theological Seminary for a course, I attended Sunday worship at Nassau Presbyterian Church. It is a lovely building with a strong membership, including many faculty and staff from the University and Seminary, and the preaching is, as you might expect, pretty intellectual. Well, after the service I was standing around in the social room, when this man began to speak with me. I told him the sermon gave me a lot to ponder. “Most likely,” he said, “but I have not understood a sermon here in 25 years. It seems that everyone here is either a professor or a lawyer, or some other highly educated professional, so the ministers tend to preach to them. I’m just a regular guy; I have a very successful house painting business, so I can afford to live in this upscale town, but I don’t have the education that most members have.
“Then why do you stay,” I asked? “What do you get out of it?”
“Oh, I will never leave this church,” he continued, “because it’s the place where I learned to be a better Christian. You see, some years ago, we started these visits to the prison, and so I thought, well, this is something Jesus said we should do, so I will try it. I really wasn’t that enthusiastic, but they needed someone with a van to drive and, so I volunteered. I started visiting people I could have so easily hated---like this rapist. Hey, I have three daughters. What was I doing talking to a man like this? But in time after listening to his story as well as the stories of other prisoners, I began to see them differently from the way the world sees them. And slowly it dawned on me that the gospel is true--- whatever we do to the least of these we do to Christ. I even gave some ex-prisoners jobs. There was this one tough guy, who disappointed me, when he stole money from a home we were painting, but you know something, against reason, I didn’t fire him. I prayed about it, and asked God to help me make the right decision. If I fired him, what would he do? Would he be able to get another job, or would he choose crime? So, I told him I would pay back the money, and I wanted him to continue working for me. I expect you to pay me back, I told him. He was shocked; he thought I had lost my mind. Well, so did my wife. But I felt this is what Jesus would have me do. That was 15 years ago, and that guy is my best worker. No, I may not understand the sermons here, but I have begun to understand what Christ would have me do. That’s why I am here. That’s why I stay.”
The Church is the body of Christ, and we are called to be part of that body. And we might be attracted to a particular church for all kinds of reasons—like my former church in New Haven, which boasted a stunning sanctuary, an exquisite hand built Fisk organ, a talented paid choir and a long and proud history, all of which were wonderful gifts. But none of that should be the main reason for the church. We are in church to be transformed into disciples, to help one another practice Christian faith, which means learning to see differently and act differently from how the world sees and acts. The world does not set the standards. Christ does, and we are called to follow him---although we sometimes stumble after him, or like Nicodemus, impressed by the wrong things, we come to Jesus by night. But at least we come, and that is a beginning.
The Temptation of Pride by: Rev. Sandra L. Olsen 3/1/2020
Genesis 2: 15-17; 3: 1-7
Matthew 4: 1-11
No sooner was Jesus baptized than he was led out into the wilderness by the Spirit, where for forty days and nights he was tempted by the devil. Matthew’s version tells us that at his baptism the heavens opened, and the Spirit alighted on Jesus, while a voice claimed him as the Beloved Son. And immediately after that---the next verse, in fact, we are told that the same Spirit led him to the place where he would face the tempter. In other words, it is impossible to be the chosen one, the beloved one, without being tested. There is no spiritual maturity or depth without wrestling with temptation, or as the great Protestant reformer, Martin Luther, would say centuries later, “The worst temptation of all is to have no temptation.”
And so, the Church, throughout its 2000 years of history, has paid great attention to the subject of temptation and its companion, sin. And, according to the Church, the crowning glory of all the sins is Pride. By the Middle Ages the Church had catalogued seven deadly sins: pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony and lust. Pride was always considered the linchpin, the major sin, which allowed and encouraged all the other sins. Now we understand that a certain amount of pride is necessary if one is to grow confidence and learn responsibility. It is important to take pride in one’s work and achievements. But this kind of self worth and confidence is not the kind of pride condemned as sinful, and when it is so condemned, it is a terrible injustice. I remember many years ago, when I worked as a chaplain in a state mental hospital, I met Sister Claire, a brilliant woman, who had received her PhD in literature from Columbia University sometime in the mid 1950’s. Her dream had been to teach at St. Mary’s College---at that time the sister college to Indiana’s Notre Dame. St. Mary’s hired her, and she was all set to go, until her Order decided she was too full of pride for her intellectual gifts, and to break her of that pride, she was assigned to teach junior high age girls. But that was not her call, not her gift, and in time she became rebellious, frustrated, angry and finally sick. When I met her, she had already spent over 25 years in the mental hospital.
The desire to use our gifts is not sinful pride. Pride becomes sin when it is excessive self-love, the tendency to elevate the self to the place of God. Adam and Eve became the prototypes of the prideful human, because when Satan told Eve that she could eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, she was attracted by the idea that she would be like God. The desire to be more than human is sin. And this is what makes the story of Jesus’ temptation so profoundly revelatory of the human condition. Jesus was not so full of pride that he thought he should be spared the full experience of his humanity, including temptation. Do you recall last week a child’s letter to God that asked, How did you know you are God? Well, Jesus would learn who he was by living fully and facing fully what it is human beings have to face: temptation, suffering and finally death.
In what is surely one of the great masterpieces of western literature, Milton’s Paradise Lost, we have an extraordinary psychological portrayal of pride in the character of Satan. Like the story of Adam and Eve, the truth of Paradise Lost does not depend upon an actual historical occurrence. Its truth lies in its power to reveal something significantly true about the human condition. Milton’s Satan, too proud to pay homage to God, led a rebellion of angels, and then when he was thrown into hell, he claimed it was better to rule there than to serve in heaven. Satan had this warped idea that God’s greatness depended upon submission, and so if he refused to submit to God, he thought he would then replace God. Pride blinded Satan to what truly made God great and attractive. It was not God’s raw power to demand submission, but rather God’s power to love. But pride blinds, allowing the excessively proud to see only a very small portion of reality. They see only the self, a self which sometimes tries to take all the credit.
Some time ago I read an article about the brilliantly talented violinist, Joshua Bell, who claims he is an atheist. Greatly annoyed when a believer told Bell how fortunate he was that God had blessed him with such a wonderful gift, Bell took offense, saying he felt giving God credit diminished his (Bell’s) hard work in becoming a great violinist. Now there is no doubt that hard work and discipline played a major role in Bell’s success, and yes Bell deserves great admiration for all he has achieved. Yet it strikes me as excessively prideful to fail to acknowledge that his ability is not completely self-generated. There was a gift, a potential to begin with, something in his DNA, which Bell then acted upon and worked hard to develop. The strategy of pride is always to attack not at our weakest point, but at our strongest. Remember, Satan was known as Lucifer, the brightest shining star of all the angels, and yet he was the first to fall.
All three temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness involved the self, his identity, what kind of messiah he would be, and in conquering them and living fully, Jesus would become became the man for others. Satan challenged him, “If you are the Son of God, do this: turn these stones into bread; if you are the son of God, throw yourself down, for surely God will lift you up, and in the third temptation he promised Jesus that all the kingdoms of the world would be his, if he would fall down and worship Satan. Jesus did not fall for the bait. As much as the temptations were about Jesus, he also realized they were about God, about what God wanted, which is why Matthew has Jesus answer each temptation with a quote from Deuteronomy, The Old Testament book, which shows us the Jewish people finally ending their wanderings in the wilderness and moving into the Promised Land. While Moses would not reach the Promised Land with them, he reminds the people, Remember the covenant God has made with you. Remember, it is not all about you, but it is all about God and human beings, who are called to faithfulness even as they (and we) face the temptation to run away from that call. And as difficult and trying as that temptation is, it is worse, said Luther, to have no temptation at all, because then our spirituality remains infantile.
Genesis 2: 15-17; 3: 1-7
Matthew 4: 1-11
No sooner was Jesus baptized than he was led out into the wilderness by the Spirit, where for forty days and nights he was tempted by the devil. Matthew’s version tells us that at his baptism the heavens opened, and the Spirit alighted on Jesus, while a voice claimed him as the Beloved Son. And immediately after that---the next verse, in fact, we are told that the same Spirit led him to the place where he would face the tempter. In other words, it is impossible to be the chosen one, the beloved one, without being tested. There is no spiritual maturity or depth without wrestling with temptation, or as the great Protestant reformer, Martin Luther, would say centuries later, “The worst temptation of all is to have no temptation.”
And so, the Church, throughout its 2000 years of history, has paid great attention to the subject of temptation and its companion, sin. And, according to the Church, the crowning glory of all the sins is Pride. By the Middle Ages the Church had catalogued seven deadly sins: pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony and lust. Pride was always considered the linchpin, the major sin, which allowed and encouraged all the other sins. Now we understand that a certain amount of pride is necessary if one is to grow confidence and learn responsibility. It is important to take pride in one’s work and achievements. But this kind of self worth and confidence is not the kind of pride condemned as sinful, and when it is so condemned, it is a terrible injustice. I remember many years ago, when I worked as a chaplain in a state mental hospital, I met Sister Claire, a brilliant woman, who had received her PhD in literature from Columbia University sometime in the mid 1950’s. Her dream had been to teach at St. Mary’s College---at that time the sister college to Indiana’s Notre Dame. St. Mary’s hired her, and she was all set to go, until her Order decided she was too full of pride for her intellectual gifts, and to break her of that pride, she was assigned to teach junior high age girls. But that was not her call, not her gift, and in time she became rebellious, frustrated, angry and finally sick. When I met her, she had already spent over 25 years in the mental hospital.
The desire to use our gifts is not sinful pride. Pride becomes sin when it is excessive self-love, the tendency to elevate the self to the place of God. Adam and Eve became the prototypes of the prideful human, because when Satan told Eve that she could eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, she was attracted by the idea that she would be like God. The desire to be more than human is sin. And this is what makes the story of Jesus’ temptation so profoundly revelatory of the human condition. Jesus was not so full of pride that he thought he should be spared the full experience of his humanity, including temptation. Do you recall last week a child’s letter to God that asked, How did you know you are God? Well, Jesus would learn who he was by living fully and facing fully what it is human beings have to face: temptation, suffering and finally death.
In what is surely one of the great masterpieces of western literature, Milton’s Paradise Lost, we have an extraordinary psychological portrayal of pride in the character of Satan. Like the story of Adam and Eve, the truth of Paradise Lost does not depend upon an actual historical occurrence. Its truth lies in its power to reveal something significantly true about the human condition. Milton’s Satan, too proud to pay homage to God, led a rebellion of angels, and then when he was thrown into hell, he claimed it was better to rule there than to serve in heaven. Satan had this warped idea that God’s greatness depended upon submission, and so if he refused to submit to God, he thought he would then replace God. Pride blinded Satan to what truly made God great and attractive. It was not God’s raw power to demand submission, but rather God’s power to love. But pride blinds, allowing the excessively proud to see only a very small portion of reality. They see only the self, a self which sometimes tries to take all the credit.
Some time ago I read an article about the brilliantly talented violinist, Joshua Bell, who claims he is an atheist. Greatly annoyed when a believer told Bell how fortunate he was that God had blessed him with such a wonderful gift, Bell took offense, saying he felt giving God credit diminished his (Bell’s) hard work in becoming a great violinist. Now there is no doubt that hard work and discipline played a major role in Bell’s success, and yes Bell deserves great admiration for all he has achieved. Yet it strikes me as excessively prideful to fail to acknowledge that his ability is not completely self-generated. There was a gift, a potential to begin with, something in his DNA, which Bell then acted upon and worked hard to develop. The strategy of pride is always to attack not at our weakest point, but at our strongest. Remember, Satan was known as Lucifer, the brightest shining star of all the angels, and yet he was the first to fall.
All three temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness involved the self, his identity, what kind of messiah he would be, and in conquering them and living fully, Jesus would become became the man for others. Satan challenged him, “If you are the Son of God, do this: turn these stones into bread; if you are the son of God, throw yourself down, for surely God will lift you up, and in the third temptation he promised Jesus that all the kingdoms of the world would be his, if he would fall down and worship Satan. Jesus did not fall for the bait. As much as the temptations were about Jesus, he also realized they were about God, about what God wanted, which is why Matthew has Jesus answer each temptation with a quote from Deuteronomy, The Old Testament book, which shows us the Jewish people finally ending their wanderings in the wilderness and moving into the Promised Land. While Moses would not reach the Promised Land with them, he reminds the people, Remember the covenant God has made with you. Remember, it is not all about you, but it is all about God and human beings, who are called to faithfulness even as they (and we) face the temptation to run away from that call. And as difficult and trying as that temptation is, it is worse, said Luther, to have no temptation at all, because then our spirituality remains infantile.
Ash Wednesday Preached by: Sandra Olsen 2/26/2020
The song wafted into the hospital hallway, and that music, my favorite aria from my favorite opera, Puccini’s La Boheme, was my introduction to Elizabeth. Now I want you to imagine being in a hospital on the floor of a critical care unit, approaching a room and hearing this: Aria played. La Boheme, by the way, is a love story that turns tragic, because the heroine, Mimi, dies from tuberculosis at the opera’s conclusion.
Elizabeth was 37 years old, a gifted neurosurgeon from Johns Hopkins, afflicted with a fatal brain tumor. She was the mother of two children, a girl age 6 and a boy, age 4. She came to University Hospital to die after her husband, who himself was a general surgeon, also at Johns Hopkins, lost courage and ran. I cannot bear to see the love of my life die, he said. God help me; God forgive me. I cannot do it. I cannot face my children with my failure to save their mother. And so he ran, and Elizabeth came with her children to the place where her parents lived and where her father had been a professor of medicine.
Since Elizabeth and I were both lovers of Puccini operas, we had this immediate bond, and she and I grew very close. We had long talks about life and death, and I came to admire greatly her courage and dignity. And I came to admire something else as well: her ability to forgive someone whom she deeply loved and who had broken her heart.
Elizabeth insisted that understanding helps one to forgive, and she did understand her husband. They met in medical school, and they fell deeply in love. Both of them were passionate about medicine, she the intricacies of the human brain, and he the complexities and interrelationship of individual body parts. He did not like to concentrate on one part of the body as she did; he liked the challenge of honing his skills on various body parts---thus, his specialty in general surgery.
Elizabeth told me that her husband’s great enemy was death, and he fought against it with all the determination and skill he could muster. He could not stand to lose a patient, and when he did, he would descend into a deep depression for days on end. He even tried therapy, she said, because he realized his reactions were outside the normal curve. Many surgeons fight death, Elizabeth said, but not to the same degree my husband did. And now, because he knows this is a battle death will finally win, he cannot bear it. I am afraid he is a coward, she said. I know that, and worst of all, he knows it.
Elizabeth was not consumed by anger or bitterness, just a wrenching hurt and also a deep forgiveness, born of love and understanding. She hoped against hope that he would return toward the end, and even on her last day, she would move in and out of consciousness, calling his name, still hoping that he would come. But he never did. When she died her service boasted beautiful voices singing some of Puccini’s most stirring arias as well as the most beautiful arrangement of flowers I have ever seen, ribboned with these words, My love, forgive me. She already had. He did not even have to ask.
There is something about mortality that connects with the theme of forgiveness. Since we do not have an unlimited time, how we bear our hurts, defeats and disappointments matter. If you read the stories of the Greek and Roman myths, especially the stories of the gods and goddesses, the issue of forgiveness never arises. No god or goddess ever says to another god or goddess, I’m sorry; no god or goddess ever offers forgiveness to another divine one. Repentance and forgiveness are not big issues, when time never runs out, because there is an infinite amount of time to redo and remake reality. But we humans do not have infinite time, and so what we do with the finite time we have does matter. We cannot redo our past and outlive our sins. And that is where forgiveness enters.
Today we remember that we are dust and to dust we shall return. We also are reminded that the piety and faithfulness God would ask of us cannot be reduced to a list of rules that can be easily checked off. We are called to cultivate a disposition of the inner heart and spirit, a generosity of judgment that opens itself up wide to others and the world. This is, as Isaiah reminds us, a repairing of the walls or the translation I prefer: the repairing of the breach. Of course, in opening up wide, we open ourselves to great pain and disappointment, as Elizabeth did. She loved her husband to the very end, and though she died with a broken heart, it was not a bitter one. It was a forgiving heart. And that was and is a spiritual victory, which Elizabeth offered to God.
We all have sins to be sorry for, sins to repent of just as we also bear the stinging hurts and betrayals with which others have afflicted us. And how we bear all that says something about the kind of spiritual life we lead and leave behind, when our time on this earth is over. And yet the final consolation and victory are not ours to claim, because in the end it is not all about us, but all about God, our God in Jesus Christ, who assures us that when we fail, there is yet mercy and love. And that is the great spiritual victory, offered by God to all of us.
The song wafted into the hospital hallway, and that music, my favorite aria from my favorite opera, Puccini’s La Boheme, was my introduction to Elizabeth. Now I want you to imagine being in a hospital on the floor of a critical care unit, approaching a room and hearing this: Aria played. La Boheme, by the way, is a love story that turns tragic, because the heroine, Mimi, dies from tuberculosis at the opera’s conclusion.
Elizabeth was 37 years old, a gifted neurosurgeon from Johns Hopkins, afflicted with a fatal brain tumor. She was the mother of two children, a girl age 6 and a boy, age 4. She came to University Hospital to die after her husband, who himself was a general surgeon, also at Johns Hopkins, lost courage and ran. I cannot bear to see the love of my life die, he said. God help me; God forgive me. I cannot do it. I cannot face my children with my failure to save their mother. And so he ran, and Elizabeth came with her children to the place where her parents lived and where her father had been a professor of medicine.
Since Elizabeth and I were both lovers of Puccini operas, we had this immediate bond, and she and I grew very close. We had long talks about life and death, and I came to admire greatly her courage and dignity. And I came to admire something else as well: her ability to forgive someone whom she deeply loved and who had broken her heart.
Elizabeth insisted that understanding helps one to forgive, and she did understand her husband. They met in medical school, and they fell deeply in love. Both of them were passionate about medicine, she the intricacies of the human brain, and he the complexities and interrelationship of individual body parts. He did not like to concentrate on one part of the body as she did; he liked the challenge of honing his skills on various body parts---thus, his specialty in general surgery.
Elizabeth told me that her husband’s great enemy was death, and he fought against it with all the determination and skill he could muster. He could not stand to lose a patient, and when he did, he would descend into a deep depression for days on end. He even tried therapy, she said, because he realized his reactions were outside the normal curve. Many surgeons fight death, Elizabeth said, but not to the same degree my husband did. And now, because he knows this is a battle death will finally win, he cannot bear it. I am afraid he is a coward, she said. I know that, and worst of all, he knows it.
Elizabeth was not consumed by anger or bitterness, just a wrenching hurt and also a deep forgiveness, born of love and understanding. She hoped against hope that he would return toward the end, and even on her last day, she would move in and out of consciousness, calling his name, still hoping that he would come. But he never did. When she died her service boasted beautiful voices singing some of Puccini’s most stirring arias as well as the most beautiful arrangement of flowers I have ever seen, ribboned with these words, My love, forgive me. She already had. He did not even have to ask.
There is something about mortality that connects with the theme of forgiveness. Since we do not have an unlimited time, how we bear our hurts, defeats and disappointments matter. If you read the stories of the Greek and Roman myths, especially the stories of the gods and goddesses, the issue of forgiveness never arises. No god or goddess ever says to another god or goddess, I’m sorry; no god or goddess ever offers forgiveness to another divine one. Repentance and forgiveness are not big issues, when time never runs out, because there is an infinite amount of time to redo and remake reality. But we humans do not have infinite time, and so what we do with the finite time we have does matter. We cannot redo our past and outlive our sins. And that is where forgiveness enters.
Today we remember that we are dust and to dust we shall return. We also are reminded that the piety and faithfulness God would ask of us cannot be reduced to a list of rules that can be easily checked off. We are called to cultivate a disposition of the inner heart and spirit, a generosity of judgment that opens itself up wide to others and the world. This is, as Isaiah reminds us, a repairing of the walls or the translation I prefer: the repairing of the breach. Of course, in opening up wide, we open ourselves to great pain and disappointment, as Elizabeth did. She loved her husband to the very end, and though she died with a broken heart, it was not a bitter one. It was a forgiving heart. And that was and is a spiritual victory, which Elizabeth offered to God.
We all have sins to be sorry for, sins to repent of just as we also bear the stinging hurts and betrayals with which others have afflicted us. And how we bear all that says something about the kind of spiritual life we lead and leave behind, when our time on this earth is over. And yet the final consolation and victory are not ours to claim, because in the end it is not all about us, but all about God, our God in Jesus Christ, who assures us that when we fail, there is yet mercy and love. And that is the great spiritual victory, offered by God to all of us.
LETTERS TO GOD WRITTEN BY CHILDREN, READ BY SANDRA AT THE SERVICE: 2/23/2020
These are the letters from a book called, Letters to God, which Sandra read during the worship service on February 23, 2020.
We plan to print the, Letters to God, written by our congregation and will send it out at a later date.
Letters to God
In Sunday School they told us what you do. Who does it when you are on vacation? Jane
How did you know you were God? Charlene
I read the Bible. What does begat mean? Nobody will tell me. Love Alison
Dear God, Are you really invisible, or is that one of your tricks? Lucy
Dear God, Did you mean for the giraffe to look like that, or was it an accident? I have accidents all the time, so don’t feel bad. Norma
Dear God, Instead of letting people die and having to make new ones, why don’t you just keep the ones you already have? Jane
Dear God, Do animals use you, or is there somebody else for them? Nancy
Dear God, I like the Lord’s Prayer the best of all. Did you have to write it a lot, or did you get it right the first time? I have to write everything I ever write over again. Lois
Dear God, It’s ok that you made different religions, but don’t you get mixed up sometimes? Arnold
Dear God, What does it mean that you are a jealous God? I thought you had everything. Jane
Dear God, Is Reverent Coe a friend of yours, or do you just know him through business? Donny
Dear God, Did you really mean do unto others as they do unto you, because if you did, then I’m going to fix my brother? Darla
Dear God, Thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy. Joyce
Dear God, Please put another holiday between Christmas and Easter. There is nothing good in there now. Ginny
Dear God, Maybe Cain and Abel would not kill each other so much if they had their own rooms. It works with my brother. Larry
Dear God, I bet it is very hard for you to love all of everybody in the whole world. There are only four people in our family, and I can never do it. Nan
Dear God, My brother told me about being born, but it doesn’t sound right. I think you can do better than this. Marsha
Dear God, In school we learned that Thomas Edison made light, but in Sunday School they said you did it. So I bet he stole your idea. Donna
Dear God, I told my Sunday School teacher that you are made of all kinds of people and all kinds of colors. She told me I was wrong. You ought to be more careful about the people you hire to teach your stuff. Jeff.
Dear God,
I know this is a question that arises again and again, but the pain, evil and suffering in the world are the most significant reasons people offer for not believing in you. And it is neither a trivial question nor a trivial accusation against you. It is perhaps the biggest question we can ponder. And quite frankly, there are no good answers. We can bring our best minds and spirits to this question, and still we come up short. Still there is no answer. And that defense about free will: That just does not cut it, because there is disease that has nothing to do with free will. A young mother dies a terrible death after a valiant fight against cancer. There is no reason for that, nothing that can justify her suffering and the loss her child must bear. It is just the way life is; it is not a perfect world, though some philosophers have argued it is the best of all possible worlds. But that is hard to believe given the massive wrongs history has witnessed---6 million Jews slaughtered for no other reason than their identity as Jews. Why would the free will of the evil doers count more than the free will of the victims? It is no consolation to be told that one day we will understand---one day we shall see face to face as Paul says. That does not really help, because the problems we face and the questions we have are for this life and this earth---not for some beyond. You have given us keen intelligence, and you expect us to use it. And so I conclude that the power you have comes down to love, the power that love has to persuade, but not to force.
These are the letters from a book called, Letters to God, which Sandra read during the worship service on February 23, 2020.
We plan to print the, Letters to God, written by our congregation and will send it out at a later date.
Letters to God
In Sunday School they told us what you do. Who does it when you are on vacation? Jane
How did you know you were God? Charlene
I read the Bible. What does begat mean? Nobody will tell me. Love Alison
Dear God, Are you really invisible, or is that one of your tricks? Lucy
Dear God, Did you mean for the giraffe to look like that, or was it an accident? I have accidents all the time, so don’t feel bad. Norma
Dear God, Instead of letting people die and having to make new ones, why don’t you just keep the ones you already have? Jane
Dear God, Do animals use you, or is there somebody else for them? Nancy
Dear God, I like the Lord’s Prayer the best of all. Did you have to write it a lot, or did you get it right the first time? I have to write everything I ever write over again. Lois
Dear God, It’s ok that you made different religions, but don’t you get mixed up sometimes? Arnold
Dear God, What does it mean that you are a jealous God? I thought you had everything. Jane
Dear God, Is Reverent Coe a friend of yours, or do you just know him through business? Donny
Dear God, Did you really mean do unto others as they do unto you, because if you did, then I’m going to fix my brother? Darla
Dear God, Thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy. Joyce
Dear God, Please put another holiday between Christmas and Easter. There is nothing good in there now. Ginny
Dear God, Maybe Cain and Abel would not kill each other so much if they had their own rooms. It works with my brother. Larry
Dear God, I bet it is very hard for you to love all of everybody in the whole world. There are only four people in our family, and I can never do it. Nan
Dear God, My brother told me about being born, but it doesn’t sound right. I think you can do better than this. Marsha
Dear God, In school we learned that Thomas Edison made light, but in Sunday School they said you did it. So I bet he stole your idea. Donna
Dear God, I told my Sunday School teacher that you are made of all kinds of people and all kinds of colors. She told me I was wrong. You ought to be more careful about the people you hire to teach your stuff. Jeff.
Dear God,
I know this is a question that arises again and again, but the pain, evil and suffering in the world are the most significant reasons people offer for not believing in you. And it is neither a trivial question nor a trivial accusation against you. It is perhaps the biggest question we can ponder. And quite frankly, there are no good answers. We can bring our best minds and spirits to this question, and still we come up short. Still there is no answer. And that defense about free will: That just does not cut it, because there is disease that has nothing to do with free will. A young mother dies a terrible death after a valiant fight against cancer. There is no reason for that, nothing that can justify her suffering and the loss her child must bear. It is just the way life is; it is not a perfect world, though some philosophers have argued it is the best of all possible worlds. But that is hard to believe given the massive wrongs history has witnessed---6 million Jews slaughtered for no other reason than their identity as Jews. Why would the free will of the evil doers count more than the free will of the victims? It is no consolation to be told that one day we will understand---one day we shall see face to face as Paul says. That does not really help, because the problems we face and the questions we have are for this life and this earth---not for some beyond. You have given us keen intelligence, and you expect us to use it. And so I conclude that the power you have comes down to love, the power that love has to persuade, but not to force.
THE LOVE OF LAW OR THE LAW OF LOVE ~ Preached by Sandra Olsen 2/16/2020
Deuteronomy 30: 15-20
Matthew 5: 21-37
A few years ago, a woman, who exercised at the same place I did, came in one morning all upset, because her husband had decided to work at home that morning, when she was planning to get together with a friend to organize a surprise birthday party for her husband. “What’s the problem?” I asked. “Well, he wanted to know where I was going.” So why didn’t you just make something up, I asked. Oh no, she said. That would have been a lie, and it’s a sin to lie. Now I knew this woman to be a member of a fundamentalist church, and I never discussed religion with her, because I knew we would not agree on much. But since I was already involved in the conversation, I continued. No, that is not really a lie; it’s not about deceit or taking advantage or doing harm. You are simply planning a party. Well, she said. A lie is a lie.
I suppose I should have dropped it, but I didn’t. OK, I continued, what would you do if you had been living in Nazi Germany during the Second World War and you were hiding Jews? Let’s say the Nazis came and asked you if you knew where any Jewish people were hiding. The Nazis in this case would not have the right to the truth, because they would use the truth to do harm. Your moral obligation would be to keep the truth from them. At this point, the woman was clearly upset. I’m not sure; I never thought about something like that. I have always tried to follow the rules of my religion. At which point, I simply said, Religion is not always about following rules. Sometimes you have to think.
The 5th chapter of Matthew, what we know as the Sermon on the Mount, is very much concerned with laws and rules. Matthew was a Jew and standing in that tradition he had a particular notion of law. It was supposed to be life giving, grace filled, as we heard in Deuteronomy, when God puts before the people the choice between life or death.
Now Matthew understood Jesus to be the new Moses, the new lawgiver, who fulfills the law by bringing a new and higher righteousness---the law of love. Now this law of love---this higher righteousness--- can be pretty tricky, because it is demanding and uncomfortable and against the ordinary wisdom of the world. You are not only judged by your actions, hard enough, but also Matthew has Jesus talking about our inner feelings and dispositions, where emotions like anger, greed, jealousy and lust reside.
But the other tricky thing about the law of love is that it is not always a rational rule to follow. Matthew does make a valiant attempt to put it in the form of rules as he shows Jesus setting the bar higher and higher by saying: You have heard it said, but I say to you. And yet this attempt to make love a rule or law hardly exhausts the meaning and conditions of love, because sometimes, as you ask yourself what it means to do the loving thing in a particular situation, you do not always come up with an obvious answer. If you are like the woman whose story I began my sermon with this morning, and you want a list of rules to follow so you don’t have to think things through, the gospel probably will not give you what you want. It casts a very wide net, and though it encompasses rules and laws, sometimes it is also beyond rules and laws.
A few weeks ago, one of my colleagues, a minister in the Presbyterian Church with whom I have a pretty intellectual relationship, called me to discuss Matthew’s idea of higher righteousness and to tell me a story he recently learned from one of his parishioners. Born in 1935, Caroline had grown up in Virginia, the daughter of wealth, whose ancestors were slave holders. Now her parents, she said, were highly educated persons, and they never, ever used the N word, but they were racists through and through, and they had no desire to learn or to change. Well, in 1953, Caroline did what most young southern women did not do: she went North to college, Barnard in New York. And during her senior year in college, she met this young lawyer, fresh out of law school, working on behalf of tenants’ rights. And Carson was committed and brilliant and black, and they fell in love. Well, you can imagine how this was received back in Virginia, where interracial marriage was against the law. But Caroline and Carson did not care what anyone in Virginia thought, and they planned to marry right after Caroline’s graduation--- until Carson suddenly disappeared---gone without a trace. No one knew a thing, and even more outrageous, no one cared to do anything. The police told her, “He got cold feet and ran away,” realizing such a marriage could never work out, at least not in 1957. That was just the way it was.
But Caroline never believed that was the way it was. She suspected her family was involved in Carson’s disappearance, and so she just stopped going home---until 1991, when her father was dying. She had not been home in 35 years, had not spoken to her family, but like the prodigal, they thought she was, she returned. Her mother kissed her on my cheek, but it was clear, Caroline thought, she did not want her there. And so alone Caroline entered her father’s room. Caroline, her father uttered her name, and then he said, Carrie, his affectionate name for her. You have come.
Caroline sat down on the bed and took his hand. It has been a long time, she said, and we both know why. But we will not speak of that now. Oh, but we will, her father insisted. We must speak of it, and then he told her the whole ugly story---how Carson himself was threatened and his family too, his 22 year old brother, run off the road and seriously hurt. Only the first accident, Carson was warned and others would follow. And because Carson was black and it was 1957, the same year the Little Rock Nine tried to integrate Central High, he disappeared--- with financial help from Caroline’s family for him and his family.
Now imagine what you would do or say in such a situation. Imagine hearing what your family had done to the man you were about to marry. But Caroline said nothing; she simply sat there, holding her father’s hand without saying a word about the past. For two days and nights she sat with him until he died. No words of regret were ever spoken by either of them. It was what it was.
And yet my colleague wondered if in that encounter there was a hint of higher righteousness--- higher not in the sense that differences were overcome and healed and forgiveness offered, but higher in the sense that for two days and nights love was the bond that held them together. My colleague had just learned this story; Caroline only told him a few weeks ago, because she wanted to talk to him about forgiveness. My father was still a racist in 1991, when he died, Caroline told her minister. There was no apology for what he had done, and yet she realized that she loved him, just as her father had realized he still loved her. And the question Caroline put to my colleague was this: Can you really love someone when you do not forgive him?
We all know that change is never easy, and sometimes people whom we deeply love do not change in the way we would want or even need. There is a choice between life and death, and tragically, some might choose death, symbolically as well as literally. But perhaps this is when Jesus as the Christ is most helpful, because he teaches us something about being on the side of love, especially when we have been profoundly hurt and betrayed, especially when someone we love does not choose full and abundant life. We can force no one to do what we are convinced is the right thing; we can force no one to change, but we can still be on the side of love, as Caroline and her father realized. And figuring out how to do that---how to be on the side of love is why we are here, why we believe church matters, because it can help us to embrace the higher righteousness, which is the law of love.
Deuteronomy 30: 15-20
Matthew 5: 21-37
A few years ago, a woman, who exercised at the same place I did, came in one morning all upset, because her husband had decided to work at home that morning, when she was planning to get together with a friend to organize a surprise birthday party for her husband. “What’s the problem?” I asked. “Well, he wanted to know where I was going.” So why didn’t you just make something up, I asked. Oh no, she said. That would have been a lie, and it’s a sin to lie. Now I knew this woman to be a member of a fundamentalist church, and I never discussed religion with her, because I knew we would not agree on much. But since I was already involved in the conversation, I continued. No, that is not really a lie; it’s not about deceit or taking advantage or doing harm. You are simply planning a party. Well, she said. A lie is a lie.
I suppose I should have dropped it, but I didn’t. OK, I continued, what would you do if you had been living in Nazi Germany during the Second World War and you were hiding Jews? Let’s say the Nazis came and asked you if you knew where any Jewish people were hiding. The Nazis in this case would not have the right to the truth, because they would use the truth to do harm. Your moral obligation would be to keep the truth from them. At this point, the woman was clearly upset. I’m not sure; I never thought about something like that. I have always tried to follow the rules of my religion. At which point, I simply said, Religion is not always about following rules. Sometimes you have to think.
The 5th chapter of Matthew, what we know as the Sermon on the Mount, is very much concerned with laws and rules. Matthew was a Jew and standing in that tradition he had a particular notion of law. It was supposed to be life giving, grace filled, as we heard in Deuteronomy, when God puts before the people the choice between life or death.
Now Matthew understood Jesus to be the new Moses, the new lawgiver, who fulfills the law by bringing a new and higher righteousness---the law of love. Now this law of love---this higher righteousness--- can be pretty tricky, because it is demanding and uncomfortable and against the ordinary wisdom of the world. You are not only judged by your actions, hard enough, but also Matthew has Jesus talking about our inner feelings and dispositions, where emotions like anger, greed, jealousy and lust reside.
But the other tricky thing about the law of love is that it is not always a rational rule to follow. Matthew does make a valiant attempt to put it in the form of rules as he shows Jesus setting the bar higher and higher by saying: You have heard it said, but I say to you. And yet this attempt to make love a rule or law hardly exhausts the meaning and conditions of love, because sometimes, as you ask yourself what it means to do the loving thing in a particular situation, you do not always come up with an obvious answer. If you are like the woman whose story I began my sermon with this morning, and you want a list of rules to follow so you don’t have to think things through, the gospel probably will not give you what you want. It casts a very wide net, and though it encompasses rules and laws, sometimes it is also beyond rules and laws.
A few weeks ago, one of my colleagues, a minister in the Presbyterian Church with whom I have a pretty intellectual relationship, called me to discuss Matthew’s idea of higher righteousness and to tell me a story he recently learned from one of his parishioners. Born in 1935, Caroline had grown up in Virginia, the daughter of wealth, whose ancestors were slave holders. Now her parents, she said, were highly educated persons, and they never, ever used the N word, but they were racists through and through, and they had no desire to learn or to change. Well, in 1953, Caroline did what most young southern women did not do: she went North to college, Barnard in New York. And during her senior year in college, she met this young lawyer, fresh out of law school, working on behalf of tenants’ rights. And Carson was committed and brilliant and black, and they fell in love. Well, you can imagine how this was received back in Virginia, where interracial marriage was against the law. But Caroline and Carson did not care what anyone in Virginia thought, and they planned to marry right after Caroline’s graduation--- until Carson suddenly disappeared---gone without a trace. No one knew a thing, and even more outrageous, no one cared to do anything. The police told her, “He got cold feet and ran away,” realizing such a marriage could never work out, at least not in 1957. That was just the way it was.
But Caroline never believed that was the way it was. She suspected her family was involved in Carson’s disappearance, and so she just stopped going home---until 1991, when her father was dying. She had not been home in 35 years, had not spoken to her family, but like the prodigal, they thought she was, she returned. Her mother kissed her on my cheek, but it was clear, Caroline thought, she did not want her there. And so alone Caroline entered her father’s room. Caroline, her father uttered her name, and then he said, Carrie, his affectionate name for her. You have come.
Caroline sat down on the bed and took his hand. It has been a long time, she said, and we both know why. But we will not speak of that now. Oh, but we will, her father insisted. We must speak of it, and then he told her the whole ugly story---how Carson himself was threatened and his family too, his 22 year old brother, run off the road and seriously hurt. Only the first accident, Carson was warned and others would follow. And because Carson was black and it was 1957, the same year the Little Rock Nine tried to integrate Central High, he disappeared--- with financial help from Caroline’s family for him and his family.
Now imagine what you would do or say in such a situation. Imagine hearing what your family had done to the man you were about to marry. But Caroline said nothing; she simply sat there, holding her father’s hand without saying a word about the past. For two days and nights she sat with him until he died. No words of regret were ever spoken by either of them. It was what it was.
And yet my colleague wondered if in that encounter there was a hint of higher righteousness--- higher not in the sense that differences were overcome and healed and forgiveness offered, but higher in the sense that for two days and nights love was the bond that held them together. My colleague had just learned this story; Caroline only told him a few weeks ago, because she wanted to talk to him about forgiveness. My father was still a racist in 1991, when he died, Caroline told her minister. There was no apology for what he had done, and yet she realized that she loved him, just as her father had realized he still loved her. And the question Caroline put to my colleague was this: Can you really love someone when you do not forgive him?
We all know that change is never easy, and sometimes people whom we deeply love do not change in the way we would want or even need. There is a choice between life and death, and tragically, some might choose death, symbolically as well as literally. But perhaps this is when Jesus as the Christ is most helpful, because he teaches us something about being on the side of love, especially when we have been profoundly hurt and betrayed, especially when someone we love does not choose full and abundant life. We can force no one to do what we are convinced is the right thing; we can force no one to change, but we can still be on the side of love, as Caroline and her father realized. And figuring out how to do that---how to be on the side of love is why we are here, why we believe church matters, because it can help us to embrace the higher righteousness, which is the law of love.
When Righteousness Calls ~ Preached by Sandra Olsen 2/9/2020
Matthew 5: 13-20
The Gospel of Matthew, the most Jewish sounding gospel of all, presents Jesus as the giver of the new law, the law of higher righteousness. Jesus is not only the fulfillment of the Jewish law, he also moves beyond it, by bringing a law that is far more demanding than the old law as enshrined in the 10 Commandments. Last Sunday we heard Jesus pronounce the Beatitudes, God’s blessings on the poor in spirit, the mournful, the peacemakers, the meek, the persecuted, all kinds of people, struggling with difficult issues. And now in today’s gospel, we hear him beginning to make demands on his listeners. While they are named the salt of the earth and the light of the world, they are reminded to keep their saltiness and to shine forth their light. In other words, they have to obey the fullness of the Law, the law of the prophets and the 10 Commandments, but obedience demands more than following the example of the scribes and the Pharisees. Jesus demands a higher righteousness, and what that consists of will be laid out throughout Matthew’s gospel.
So how is this new law to be applied? Now part of the law did consist of cultic rules and regulations about religious sacrifice and cleanliness, but justice was also important, which included embracing the foreigner, helping the widow and the orphan, treating workers fairly. The Jewish law was always understood to have implications for the wider community and world. And Christianity has followed that teaching, even as it also understands the challenge of applying Jesus’ law of higher righteousness to the social and political realms.
Now one way Christian thinkers have dealt with this challenge is by pointing out that we inhabit two kingdoms, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of earth. Jesus recognized that difference when he said, render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God. But we still have to ponder what exactly is due each realm. The Protestant reformer, Martin Luther, insisted that the law of love cannot be enacted politically because nations contain criminals and sinners, who must be restrained and sometimes punished. And so justice is the best the earthly kingdom can hope for. Justice is the political expression of the law of love.
If justice is the best we can hope for in the political world, how does justice make room for repentance and forgiveness? Repentance and forgiveness were huge themes in the prophet Isaiah, as you heard this morning, and they were also a major theme in Jesus’ teaching. While we often have this tendency to reduce repentance and forgiveness to the private, personal realm, notice that in Isaiah, the issue was national repentance. And that is a theme we rarely hear in actual history. Of course, there have been exceptions---Abraham Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address, when he recognized the sin of slavery and the Civil War as an expression of God’s wrath against that terrible sin. Then there was Mikhail Gorbachev in speaking about the end of the Soviet Empire and the oppression it had wrought, and Jimmy Carter, who spoke of our greed for more and more oil. In all of these instances there was recognition of wrong doing and a call to turn away from the errors of the past. But in all of these instances there was great resistance to the idea that there was anything to repent of. So is it any wonder that few political leaders in any nation call for national repentance?
But there is one extraordinary example from recent history, which happened on May 8, 1985, when one of the most important political speeches of the 20th century was made by the then president of Germany’s Bundestag, Richard Freiherr von Weizsacker. Before the German legislature, he gave an unflinching, excuse less enumeration of Nazi crimes and the many degrees of association with those horrors that ordinary Germans had. This was the first time a senior Western German leader publicly challenged the widely heard justification, “I did not know.”
Hitler, he said, did not keep his hatred from the public, but rather used the entire nation as a tool of his hatred. Every German, he said, could witness what Jewish fellow citizens had to suffer. Who could remain innocent, he asked, after the burning of the synagogues, the looting, the withdrawal of rights, the unceasing violation of human worth? It all added up, he said, to “a mountain of human suffering, suffering through death and destruction, suffering through the loss of all that one had mistakenly believed in and for which one had mistakenly fought and worked for.” Now that last reference would have included the president himself, who in 1939 was a 19 year old second lieutenant in the German army invading Poland. Later this same young man would sit as a defending attorney at the Nuremberg trials. My God, he must have asked himself, what had I fought for and defended?
While the speech made headlines all across Europe, it was ignored in the American press. Why? Is it because we as Americans shun the idea of national repentance? Do American Christians think that what Jesus taught has no relationship beyond the personal and private? When this past September I made a trip to Montgomery, Alabama concerning the project of retired clergy visitation, I also visited the Museum of Peace and Justice, known as the lynching museum, because it catalogues the names and places where black people in this country were cruelly lynched---sometimes for the crime of asking a white person for a drink of water. And there is another museum as well---the Legacy Museum, which tells the story of slavery and the fight for civil rights and justice. Yet both museums were erected with private funds; they are not national or even state museums. Is this because as a people, as a nation, we shun national repentance?
Now let’s return to that May 8, 1985 speech by the German President, which was a call for national repentance. That call seeped into the personal and private consciences of people in a little German village, prompting them to walk their own path toward repentance. The story began on March 17, 1945 when five British airmen, flying an American plane, were forced to parachute into a German village. Three weeks earlier American fire bombing had killed 4000 people in the area. On the orders of a town official the Hitler Youth executed the five men on the spot. These executions were a secret the town lived with---until 1989 when a retired Roman Catholic priest learned the truth and began talking publicly about what had happened. His words were neither appreciated nor welcomed. You should keep out of politics, he was told. That is Caesar’s world, not yours. But the priest reminded the village of the 1985 presidential speech, and said, “These are our sins; we must repent and seek forgiveness. There is no more hiding.” Soon others joined his voice, and eventually a memorial to the five airmen was built.
In 1992 a 74 year old Englishwoman, Mrs. Taylor, finally learned the truth about how her airman husband had died. Traveling to Germany for the dedication of the memorial, she stood near the place where her husband had been shot. “Father forgive,” the plaque read, “But let the living be warned.” One of the men who arrived late to the dedication---after Mrs. Taylor had departed--- was a sobbing old man, who confessed that he was among the Hitler Youth who shot the airmen. I did not have the strength to even look at her, he said. I wonder if she could ever forgive me?
Repentance and forgiveness: do they have any place in Caesar’s world? If our answer is no, then why do so many churches, including our own, fly the nation’s flag in the sanctuary? If the answer is no, then why don’t we remove it right now! But if the answer is Yes, if the call to higher righteousness, does have a place in Caesar’s world, then the hard work really begins, the hard word of trying to figure out what is the relationship between God’s kingdom and the kingdom of this world. What does one have to say to the other? How does the law of love challenge the earthly realm? Jesus said, Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. And so there we have it: the two kingdoms, yet one God in Jesus Christ who stands over both. And we are left to struggle with the question of how to live faithfully in those two realms.
At the offering:
If you would be a person of faith, then begin by practicing generosity. Where you find generosity, you will find faith, and where faith grows, so too does generosity.
Prayer: Oh God, we thank you for the blessings in our lives, and now we bring this offering as a sign of our gratitude. Make us wise stewards that in all our giving and receiving we will do your will in Jesus Christ. Amen
Matthew 5: 13-20
The Gospel of Matthew, the most Jewish sounding gospel of all, presents Jesus as the giver of the new law, the law of higher righteousness. Jesus is not only the fulfillment of the Jewish law, he also moves beyond it, by bringing a law that is far more demanding than the old law as enshrined in the 10 Commandments. Last Sunday we heard Jesus pronounce the Beatitudes, God’s blessings on the poor in spirit, the mournful, the peacemakers, the meek, the persecuted, all kinds of people, struggling with difficult issues. And now in today’s gospel, we hear him beginning to make demands on his listeners. While they are named the salt of the earth and the light of the world, they are reminded to keep their saltiness and to shine forth their light. In other words, they have to obey the fullness of the Law, the law of the prophets and the 10 Commandments, but obedience demands more than following the example of the scribes and the Pharisees. Jesus demands a higher righteousness, and what that consists of will be laid out throughout Matthew’s gospel.
So how is this new law to be applied? Now part of the law did consist of cultic rules and regulations about religious sacrifice and cleanliness, but justice was also important, which included embracing the foreigner, helping the widow and the orphan, treating workers fairly. The Jewish law was always understood to have implications for the wider community and world. And Christianity has followed that teaching, even as it also understands the challenge of applying Jesus’ law of higher righteousness to the social and political realms.
Now one way Christian thinkers have dealt with this challenge is by pointing out that we inhabit two kingdoms, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of earth. Jesus recognized that difference when he said, render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God. But we still have to ponder what exactly is due each realm. The Protestant reformer, Martin Luther, insisted that the law of love cannot be enacted politically because nations contain criminals and sinners, who must be restrained and sometimes punished. And so justice is the best the earthly kingdom can hope for. Justice is the political expression of the law of love.
If justice is the best we can hope for in the political world, how does justice make room for repentance and forgiveness? Repentance and forgiveness were huge themes in the prophet Isaiah, as you heard this morning, and they were also a major theme in Jesus’ teaching. While we often have this tendency to reduce repentance and forgiveness to the private, personal realm, notice that in Isaiah, the issue was national repentance. And that is a theme we rarely hear in actual history. Of course, there have been exceptions---Abraham Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address, when he recognized the sin of slavery and the Civil War as an expression of God’s wrath against that terrible sin. Then there was Mikhail Gorbachev in speaking about the end of the Soviet Empire and the oppression it had wrought, and Jimmy Carter, who spoke of our greed for more and more oil. In all of these instances there was recognition of wrong doing and a call to turn away from the errors of the past. But in all of these instances there was great resistance to the idea that there was anything to repent of. So is it any wonder that few political leaders in any nation call for national repentance?
But there is one extraordinary example from recent history, which happened on May 8, 1985, when one of the most important political speeches of the 20th century was made by the then president of Germany’s Bundestag, Richard Freiherr von Weizsacker. Before the German legislature, he gave an unflinching, excuse less enumeration of Nazi crimes and the many degrees of association with those horrors that ordinary Germans had. This was the first time a senior Western German leader publicly challenged the widely heard justification, “I did not know.”
Hitler, he said, did not keep his hatred from the public, but rather used the entire nation as a tool of his hatred. Every German, he said, could witness what Jewish fellow citizens had to suffer. Who could remain innocent, he asked, after the burning of the synagogues, the looting, the withdrawal of rights, the unceasing violation of human worth? It all added up, he said, to “a mountain of human suffering, suffering through death and destruction, suffering through the loss of all that one had mistakenly believed in and for which one had mistakenly fought and worked for.” Now that last reference would have included the president himself, who in 1939 was a 19 year old second lieutenant in the German army invading Poland. Later this same young man would sit as a defending attorney at the Nuremberg trials. My God, he must have asked himself, what had I fought for and defended?
While the speech made headlines all across Europe, it was ignored in the American press. Why? Is it because we as Americans shun the idea of national repentance? Do American Christians think that what Jesus taught has no relationship beyond the personal and private? When this past September I made a trip to Montgomery, Alabama concerning the project of retired clergy visitation, I also visited the Museum of Peace and Justice, known as the lynching museum, because it catalogues the names and places where black people in this country were cruelly lynched---sometimes for the crime of asking a white person for a drink of water. And there is another museum as well---the Legacy Museum, which tells the story of slavery and the fight for civil rights and justice. Yet both museums were erected with private funds; they are not national or even state museums. Is this because as a people, as a nation, we shun national repentance?
Now let’s return to that May 8, 1985 speech by the German President, which was a call for national repentance. That call seeped into the personal and private consciences of people in a little German village, prompting them to walk their own path toward repentance. The story began on March 17, 1945 when five British airmen, flying an American plane, were forced to parachute into a German village. Three weeks earlier American fire bombing had killed 4000 people in the area. On the orders of a town official the Hitler Youth executed the five men on the spot. These executions were a secret the town lived with---until 1989 when a retired Roman Catholic priest learned the truth and began talking publicly about what had happened. His words were neither appreciated nor welcomed. You should keep out of politics, he was told. That is Caesar’s world, not yours. But the priest reminded the village of the 1985 presidential speech, and said, “These are our sins; we must repent and seek forgiveness. There is no more hiding.” Soon others joined his voice, and eventually a memorial to the five airmen was built.
In 1992 a 74 year old Englishwoman, Mrs. Taylor, finally learned the truth about how her airman husband had died. Traveling to Germany for the dedication of the memorial, she stood near the place where her husband had been shot. “Father forgive,” the plaque read, “But let the living be warned.” One of the men who arrived late to the dedication---after Mrs. Taylor had departed--- was a sobbing old man, who confessed that he was among the Hitler Youth who shot the airmen. I did not have the strength to even look at her, he said. I wonder if she could ever forgive me?
Repentance and forgiveness: do they have any place in Caesar’s world? If our answer is no, then why do so many churches, including our own, fly the nation’s flag in the sanctuary? If the answer is no, then why don’t we remove it right now! But if the answer is Yes, if the call to higher righteousness, does have a place in Caesar’s world, then the hard work really begins, the hard word of trying to figure out what is the relationship between God’s kingdom and the kingdom of this world. What does one have to say to the other? How does the law of love challenge the earthly realm? Jesus said, Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. And so there we have it: the two kingdoms, yet one God in Jesus Christ who stands over both. And we are left to struggle with the question of how to live faithfully in those two realms.
At the offering:
If you would be a person of faith, then begin by practicing generosity. Where you find generosity, you will find faith, and where faith grows, so too does generosity.
Prayer: Oh God, we thank you for the blessings in our lives, and now we bring this offering as a sign of our gratitude. Make us wise stewards that in all our giving and receiving we will do your will in Jesus Christ. Amen
Blessings Abound ~Rev. Sandra Olsen 2/2/2020
Matthew 5: 1-12
In the last decade or so the subject of happiness has been the focus of numerous books and talk shows. Even serious academics---philosophers, psychologists and historians--- have turned their attention to the subject. Neurobiologists are trying to explain the anatomy of happiness—what neurotransmitters work under what conditions to make us feel happy. Americans in particular think they have a right to be happy, and well, if they are not, it must be the fault of something or someone---their job, their marriage, their diet, their religion, their government, and should they discover that changing these things does not lead to increased happiness, they wonder what went wrong. The pursuit of happiness is a national past time, enshrined by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence.
While so many people are obsessed with their happiness, it should give us pause that this word hardly ever appears in the bible, and it is never on Jesus’ lips. Instead there is this word blessed, and somehow, though we are not really sure exactly what it means, we have this sense that blessedness embraces happiness while also being more than happiness. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus has just begun his public ministry. Last week we heard him call his first disciples, and now in the 5th chapter, Matthew shows Jesus ascending the mountain, where like Moses he gives the law, the new law, which begins not with a series of commands, but with a list of blessings. Jesus does not promise the people happiness, but he does promise them blessings.
The Greek word makarios, which is translated here as blessed, has a wide range of meanings that includes fortunate, happy, even privileged. But when Jesus calls the poor in spirit, the mournful, the meek, the persecuted, those hungering for righteousness and working for peace as blessed, we wonder what he has in mind, because happy and privileged and fortunate are not the words that immediately come to our mind for such people. So what does Jesus mean by calling them blessed?
The blessedness Jesus refers to here stands in relationship to the kingdom of God, which he claims has already come near in him. The Kingdom is already present, but not yet fully so. The old world with its old rules is passing away, and the blessings that come through and in Jesus are made for the new reality, which Jesus names the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. In God’s reign blessedness does not depend upon wealth or power or intelligence or success. It is a gift, given by God. You don’t earn it; you simply receive it, which is why Jesus uses the examples he does. The people he refers to are struggling with some kind of pain or loss or difficult task. In our world such persons might appear as underachievers, and even the peacemakers, whom we do admire, sometimes carry the burden of seeing their own blood spilt. None of these conditions are comfortable or easy places to be. Yet Jesus calls these people blessed, not because of their achievements---perhaps they failed miserably--- but they are blessed because this is what God’s does; God blesses them. It is God’s nature to bless. And it is supposed to be our nature to receive the blessings, but we often have a hard time doing so, because we can be so full of ourselves, so full of our activities and our self-importance that we are not open to receive.
This is the reason Jesus is so hard on the rich, the powerful and the successful. It isn’t that success is bad, or that it is preferable to be a failure or a loser or abjectly poor. The problem is what humans make of these things. If we are puffed up with our own sense of importance; if our strength and success block our compassion for others, who are neither so fortunate nor talented, then there is something spiritually malformed in us, something which prevents us from receiving God’s blessings.
Jesus called the poor in spirit blessed precisely because they are not so full of themselves; they don’t spend their time trying to prove to others how much they know and can do. They are empty, and their emptiness waits to be filled with what God has to give. Of course, the poor in spirit, the meek, and the mournful can have their own issues; they can descend into deep depression, where their emptiness becomes so debilitating that even the desire to receive is extinguished. No one is immune to spiritual malformation. Anyone can be spiritually malformed, just as anyone can be blessed---the rich, the poor, the successful, the failures. And when we are blessed, we feel God’s unconditional love; we feel we are not alone, because as the Apostle Paul wrote in his Letter to the Romans, If God is with us, who can be against us. And it is in this sense that blessedness can be understood as a form of happiness.
Now February is Black History Month, and last month was The Rev. Martin Luther King’s birthday. I want to point to him, because April, 1968 when he was assassinated, stands out in my memory. I remember it quite well, because parts of the city of Chicago went up in flames, which I could see from my dormitory window. It did not take very long before the National Guard tanks were on the U. of Chicago campus, because as the second largest landowner in the city of Chicago, after the R. C. Church, this elite private University would be protected. I remember all of that, but I also remember how Dr. King’s speech right before his death was played over and over again. He said in his speech to the striking garbage collectors that he was happy; he had no fear of any man. And I remember thinking at the time, how could he be happy. I mean there were so many problems, so much that was not right with the country. What could he mean by being happy? At 18 I did not know, but now, after all these decades, I think I understand what he meant.
The kind of happiness he was referring to was the blessedness of which Jesus spoke. King felt that God was with him; he was surrounded by God’s love, God’s mercy and yes, God’s forgiveness. And that was blessing enough. It did not protect him from the assassin’s bullet, but Jesus was not protected from the cross. Jesus never promised protection. He promised blessings, and King felt and knew that God gave him abundant blessings. And those blessings would continue to pour down on other people, who would lead the movement toward justice long after King was gone. And that is why King could be happy, surrounded as he was by so many apparent defeats and disappointments. And yet those disappointments and defeats could not destroy the blessings, which still continue to flow, not always in the form we might want---worldly success or comfort---but in the form that God gives, if only we have the eyes and the spirit to see and accept.
In the last decade or so the subject of happiness has been the focus of numerous books and talk shows. Even serious academics---philosophers, psychologists and historians--- have turned their attention to the subject. Neurobiologists are trying to explain the anatomy of happiness—what neurotransmitters work under what conditions to make us feel happy. Americans in particular think they have a right to be happy, and well, if they are not, it must be the fault of something or someone---their job, their marriage, their diet, their religion, their government, and should they discover that changing these things does not lead to increased happiness, they wonder what went wrong. The pursuit of happiness is a national past time, enshrined by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence.
While so many people are obsessed with their happiness, it should give us pause that this word hardly ever appears in the bible, and it is never on Jesus’ lips. Instead there is this word blessed, and somehow, though we are not really sure exactly what it means, we have this sense that blessedness embraces happiness while also being more than happiness. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus has just begun his public ministry. Last week we heard him call his first disciples, and now in the 5th chapter, Matthew shows Jesus ascending the mountain, where like Moses he gives the law, the new law, which begins not with a series of commands, but with a list of blessings. Jesus does not promise the people happiness, but he does promise them blessings.
The Greek word makarios, which is translated here as blessed, has a wide range of meanings that includes fortunate, happy, even privileged. But when Jesus calls the poor in spirit, the mournful, the meek, the persecuted, those hungering for righteousness and working for peace as blessed, we wonder what he has in mind, because happy and privileged and fortunate are not the words that immediately come to our mind for such people. So what does Jesus mean by calling them blessed?
The blessedness Jesus refers to here stands in relationship to the kingdom of God, which he claims has already come near in him. The Kingdom is already present, but not yet fully so. The old world with its old rules is passing away, and the blessings that come through and in Jesus are made for the new reality, which Jesus names the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. In God’s reign blessedness does not depend upon wealth or power or intelligence or success. It is a gift, given by God. You don’t earn it; you simply receive it, which is why Jesus uses the examples he does. The people he refers to are struggling with some kind of pain or loss or difficult task. In our world such persons might appear as underachievers, and even the peacemakers, whom we do admire, sometimes carry the burden of seeing their own blood spilt. None of these conditions are comfortable or easy places to be. Yet Jesus calls these people blessed, not because of their achievements---perhaps they failed miserably--- but they are blessed because this is what God’s does; God blesses them. It is God’s nature to bless. And it is supposed to be our nature to receive the blessings, but we often have a hard time doing so, because we can be so full of ourselves, so full of our activities and our self-importance that we are not open to receive.
This is the reason Jesus is so hard on the rich, the powerful and the successful. It isn’t that success is bad, or that it is preferable to be a failure or a loser or abjectly poor. The problem is what humans make of these things. If we are puffed up with our own sense of importance; if our strength and success block our compassion for others, who are neither so fortunate nor talented, then there is something spiritually malformed in us, something which prevents us from receiving God’s blessings.
Jesus called the poor in spirit blessed precisely because they are not so full of themselves; they don’t spend their time trying to prove to others how much they know and can do. They are empty, and their emptiness waits to be filled with what God has to give. Of course, the poor in spirit, the meek, and the mournful can have their own issues; they can descend into deep depression, where their emptiness becomes so debilitating that even the desire to receive is extinguished. No one is immune to spiritual malformation. Anyone can be spiritually malformed, just as anyone can be blessed---the rich, the poor, the successful, the failures. And when we are blessed, we feel God’s unconditional love; we feel we are not alone, because as the Apostle Paul wrote in his Letter to the Romans, If God is with us, who can be against us. And it is in this sense that blessedness can be understood as a form of happiness.
Now February is Black History Month, and last month was The Rev. Martin Luther King’s birthday. I want to point to him, because April, 1968 when he was assassinated, stands out in my memory. I remember it quite well, because parts of the city of Chicago went up in flames, which I could see from my dormitory window. It did not take very long before the National Guard tanks were on the U. of Chicago campus, because as the second largest landowner in the city of Chicago, after the R. C. Church, this elite private University would be protected. I remember all of that, but I also remember how Dr. King’s speech right before his death was played over and over again. He said in his speech to the striking garbage collectors that he was happy; he had no fear of any man. And I remember thinking at the time, how could he be happy. I mean there were so many problems, so much that was not right with the country. What could he mean by being happy? At 18 I did not know, but now, after all these decades, I think I understand what he meant.
The kind of happiness he was referring to was the blessedness of which Jesus spoke. King felt that God was with him; he was surrounded by God’s love, God’s mercy and yes, God’s forgiveness. And that was blessing enough. It did not protect him from the assassin’s bullet, but Jesus was not protected from the cross. Jesus never promised protection. He promised blessings, and King felt and knew that God gave him abundant blessings. And those blessings would continue to pour down on other people, who would lead the movement toward justice long after King was gone. And that is why King could be happy, surrounded as he was by so many apparent defeats and disappointments. And yet those disappointments and defeats could not destroy the blessings, which still continue to flow, not always in the form we might want---worldly success or comfort---but in the form that God gives, if only we have the eyes and the spirit to see and accept.
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