reallifepastor

Maundy Thursday meditation….

In preparation for Maundy Thursday tomorrow, 3 communion songs–today’s Music for Meditation.

Sunday while introducing the Offering, I surprised myself by calling the Passion narrative a love story.  Then I remembered a statement someone made in a prayer group the week before:  “It’s not so much that God loved the world and gave Jesus; it’s that Jesus loved the world and chose to give his life.”  Yeah.  The story we relate this week…it IS a love story.

This recording of “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go” is from worship at Pilgrimage UCC on March 22.

A musical meditation for Holy Week Monday.

God is still speaking…has been from the beginning of time.  God spoke, and creation came into being.  After the flood, God spoke again, making covenant with all people and creatures of earth.  Later, God makes covenant with Abraham, promising numerous descendants and always to be with them.  Later still, God speaks again, this time putting it in writing in the Ten Commandments. Today, we hear through the prophet Jeremiah that God is making yet another covenant with God’s people. This time, the covenant is written on their hearts.

Our journey through covenant this Lent has revealed an exceedingly chatty God.  Why is that?  Why has God kept, why does God keep speaking?

Those of you who have children–Is your relationship with your children the same now as it was five years ago?  Ten?  Fifty?

What kinds of rules or guidelines did (or do) you have when your child was 18 months?  (Responses)  Age 5?  (Responses.)   Age 10?  (Responses)  Age 15?  (Responses)  Age 18?  (Responses)  Age 50?  If you’re relating to your 50 year old children the same way you related to them when they were 5, I’ll be available for pastoral counseling after today’s service.  🙂

Why is God still speaking?  Because we keep changing; we keep growing.  The circumstances of our lives keep evolving.  Good thing God keeps making new covenants with us….Because–To whom does God go for pastoral counseling?  🙂

One way to understand all the different versions of the covenant we’ve been exploring the past few weeks, is to see them as God’s responses to Israel’s maturing as a faithful people.  Just as parents’ covenants with their children adapt to the children’s natural maturing process, so does God adapt to our maturing process.

The flood story is about the need for a covenant between God and human beings–so human beings will know what to do.  Abraham’s story is about human beings learning to trust the covenant God has made; that’s why God has to make the covenant with old Abe four times…that we know of.  🙂   The story of the Ten Commandments is about our need to have the terms of our relationship with God “in writing,” that is, to make the relationship more formal–to form a religion.

So, what does Jeremiah’s new version of the covenant suggest about the maturational stage of God’s people?  Let’s look at Jeremiah 31:3-34 again.

“The days are surely coming, says God, when I will establish a new covenant with the people.  It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt (Great image!  “When I took them by the hand…”  like a child, right? Back when you didn’t know any different.)  —a covenant they broke, though I was their husband.” (Okay…like a child or a spouse)

Whether child or spouse, God acknowledges here that the relationship with God’s people is changing.  Now, God could be changing things because the other rules just weren’t working–the people kept breaking them. I like to think, though, that the people weren’t recalcitrant; they were just maturing. (Teenagers, you’re welcome to borrow that phrase whenever you need it. “Mom, Dad. I’m not being recalcitrant. I’m just maturing.”) Maybe the people kept breaking the old covenant because they were ready for a new kind of relationship with God.  Think about it. What happens when you try to enforce a 14-year-old’s rules on your 17-year-old?  Is the 17 year old likely to abide by those rules?  I rest my case.  🙂

So, what is this new covenant God makes with the people?  The still-speaking God continues:  “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days:  I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

Those of you who have been through — or are about to go through — the process of sending your children off to live away from home for the first time–whether for college, a job, the military, or to get married… What was that like?  Did you send them off with a set of rules?  Did you write up a contract about what behaviors would be tolerated and which wouldn’t be?  Did you remind them of their curfew?  Did you have every expectation they’d keep it? Did I mention that I’ll be available for counseling after the service?  🙂

If you didn’t write up a contract, how did you send your children off?  What words did you say?  Or, what words did your parents say to you when you left home the first time?  (Responses)  

Many of us have entered the stage of life when we’re beginning to set rules for our parents.  Strange, isn’t it?  The roles are reversing.  The anxieties are shifting–from them to us.  Now it’s we who go to bed at night just praying God keeps them safe.  Some of us are even having to write rules for the ones who once wrote rules for us.

As our relationships with our loved ones evolve, as the rules change, God’s words through the prophet give us hope: What’s real, what’s deepest, what’s best is not what we write down or chisel into stone.  What’s real and deepest and best is what’s written on our hearts.

I’m reminded of that scene from “Still Alice” we heard in Trish’s sermon last week. As Alice Howland sinks deeper into dementia, she says to her daughter, Lydia, who has moved home to care for Alice: “You’re so beautiful. I’m afraid of looking at you and not knowing who you are.” Lydia responds: “I think that even if you don’t know who I am someday, you’ll still know that I love you.” Still anxious, Alice asks: “What if I see you, and I don’t know that you’re my daughter, and I don’t know that you love me?” “Then,” Lydia says, “I’ll tell you that I do, and you’ll believe me.”

This scene gets to the heart of covenant. No matter how much our lives change, no matter how many times we have to re-visit the parameters of our relationships, one thing never changes—the love that brought us into covenant to begin with. Isn’t that the reason we stay with the maddening process of continually adapting our covenants with each other–with our children, with our parents, in communities like this one?  We do it because we love each other, right? It’s the same with God.  God continues to adapt covenant with us because God loves us. Deeply.

This is one of those sermons that went in a direction I didn’t plan for it to go. I thought we’d look at the covenant and use it to motivate ourselves to get out there and act the world into well-being in bold, new, creative ways…sort of a, God-has-kept-covenant-with us-How- are-we-going-to-keep- covenant- with-God thing.  That’s just what we need, isn’t it?  One more To-Do list?

But while I was writing, our chatty God kept speaking. The content wasn’t complicated, but it was profound. As I wrote, I heard the same words, over and over: I do it because I love you. I do it because I love you.

In the end, the details of the covenant aren’t nearly as important as the FACT of the covenant. A big part of our work together as a community of faith, is working out the details. That’s great. It’s important.  But sometimes, it’s more important simply to sit. And listen. And hear the still-speaking God say over and over: I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.

[Song:  O Love That Will Not Let Me Go]

O Love That Will Not Let Me Go

O Love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in you;

I give you back the life I owe,

That in your ocean depths its flow may swell with ardor true.

O Light that follows all my way, to you I yield my flickering flame;

Renew my spirit’s feeble ray,

That from your brilliant sunlit day it may new brightness claim.

O Joy that seeks me through my pain, to you I cannot close my heart;

I trace the rainbow through the rain,

And know the promise is not vain that you will ne’er depart.

(Here’s a blurb from the New Century Hymnal about the writing of the hymn: Although he was nearly blind, George Matheson studied for the Church of Scotland ministry, assisted by his sisters, who learned Latin, Greek, and Hebrew to help him. Matheson wrote this hymn in five minutes on June 6, 1882, at his parsonage.)

This morning’s reading from Numbers is one of many ‘complaining-in- the-wilderness’ stories in the Bible. How quickly and repeatedly the Hebrews who had been delivered out of slavery in Egypt, by the hand of God, no less, started romanticizing about the “good old days” when confronted with the hardships of the wilderness.

“Oh boy, at least back in Egypt we had plenty to eat and drink”

“Yeah and we had a variety of food, not like eating the same manna day after day after day.”

“Why did we let Moses talk us into coming to this God-forsaken wilderness anyway?”

And on it went. Then, as now, we take our blessings for granted, and fixate on what’s missing or wrong. We crave instant results and immediate gratification. We want the good stuff: Sunny days, smooth sailing, satisfaction, joy and spiritual connection. And when that’s not happening, we project, we blame, we avoid, we whine, and we go into a funk.

All of these very natural, human tendencies are magnified when we find ourselves truly in the wilderness. When we really are in dangerous places; in high stress situations; in unfamiliar, uncharted territory.

It’s terrifying. We are lost, torn asunder, powerless, out of kilter. In the wilderness, the snakes are real.

Snakes called fear and self-doubt;

Guilt and regret;

Suffering, loss, and pain.

I was divorced 25 years ago. I moved from the Washington DC area and began my first solo pastorate as a one-year interim pastor out in Hutchinson, Minnesota—about 45 miles west of Minneapolis. Even now, looking back, I vividly remember the utter desolation I felt watching the little U-Haul being towed away by my soon-to-be former husband. I stood there looking out across the cornfields, which stretched as far as I could see. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so alone. I was in the wilderness.

The movie, Still Alice, portrays the far darker wilderness of Alzheimer’s disease. As the movie begins, we meet Dr. Alice Howland, a renowned linguistics professor, mother of three adult children, happily married to another successful academic. Both are sought-after speakers. Alice’s classes at Columbia are highly regarded and always filled.

Then we start to see signs of Alice’s descent into the wilderness. This brilliant, self-directed woman gets lost while jogging a familiar route. She fails to show up for a dinner planned with old friends. She struggles to recall the bread pudding recipe she’s made for years. We see her reaching for words that she can’t find. Alice wets her pants standing in the living room after frantically searching through the house for the bathroom.

Alice struggles to stay connected as she senses the decline. She sets up little tests and reminders everywhere, but as she says to one group:

“I have no control over which yesterdays I keep and which ones get deleted. This disease will not be bargained with. I can’t offer it the names of the US presidents in exchange for the names of my children. I can’t give it the names of state capitals and keep the memories of my husband…I don’t know who I am or what I am going to lose next.

Wilderness takes many forms. I’m sure that each of you has your own experience or image of wilderness. Common to all of them, I suspect, is the sense of being stuck without a map, surrounded by snakes, in some place beyond the reach of our normal coping skills, lifelines, and faith resources.

So what does the covenantal relationship with God we’ve been talking about in Lent say to us in such horrific times and places?

Well Trish, you might be thinking, didn’t we just read the answer in John 3:16? For God so loved the world that God gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. Well, I have to confess I am suspicious of stock answers and religious formulas in general, and that I have mixed feelings about that verse in particular.

Now don’t get me wrong. I rejoice in its affirmation that God loves the world. I trust its promise that God’s invitation and concern extend to everyone. And I do believe that life, not death, will be God’s final word to us beyond every wilderness we may encounter. I just don’t like the way the verse has been oversimplified and taken for granted; how it is flashed on billboards and scoreboards and posters as a pat, one-size-fits all answer to everything.

This week I decided step back a bit to think about the passage more positively, along with the snakes and the specific wilderness experiences I have already mentioned. When I did this, several dynamics or currents of hope drifted up that I will share with you this morning.

The first dynamic is about Reframing. It has to do with how and where our perspective is sometimes adjusted from within the midst of our present wilderness circumstances.

For example, in Hutchinson after my divorce, I came to cherish seeing the harvesters going from field to field; observing the changing light patterns reflected from the sun over the corn fields at various times of day; learning different ways the hay was baled and the land plowed. Almost every day that fall, I drove by a lake and saw the trees with incredibly colored leaves reflected in the water. It was beautiful.

From within the cloud of Alzheimer’s disease, Alice Howland reframed it this way:

…My yesterdays are disappearing, and my tomorrows are uncertain, so what do I live for? I live for each day. I live in the moment. Some tomorrow soon, I’ll forget that I stood before you and gave this speech. But just because I’ll forget it some tomorrow doesn’t mean that I didn’t live every second of it today. I will forget today, but that doesn’t mean that today doesn’t matter.”

Back to the snakes in the wilderness: Ingrained in the communal memory of the Hebrew people is the experience of Moses fashioning the bronze replica of a snake wrapped around a pole. If the people looked up at the bronze snake, they were safe. If they kept their eyes on the ground, trying to dodge the snakes or kill them, they would die. We can’t possibly understand the historical mechanics of all this, but doesn’t it represent the epitome of reframing?

From fear to trust;

From looking down to looking up;

From death to life.

Years later, the gospel writer John recalls that wilderness image to reframe a cross of torture and crucifixion into a message of hope and the promise of salvation.

A second dynamic of healing in the wilderness is about Accompaniment.

I’d barely gotten myself unpacked after moving to Hutchinson, when a couple who lived a short walk away invited me for supper. After that, we often watched the evening news together that year. Elmer Howe, a local dairy farmer, decided that as a city girl I should learn to milk a cow. I treasure memories of occasionally being in the barn toward the close of day milking cows with the Howe family. Once Elmer called me in the middle of the night to come quickly to see a calf being born. I’ll never forget it. One of the deacons heard that I played tennis and she had me into a women’s tennis group the very next week.

The year in Hutchinson was difficult as I adjusted to a new place and life status. There were tears in the night and many questions in my heart. But there was also laughter and good times and I was not alone.

Unlike her highly educated, professionally successful parents and siblings, Alice’s youngest daughter, Lydia, wants to be an actress. She quit school against her parents’ wishes, moved to California, and is waiting tables between whatever acting gigs she can pick up. There’s always a little tension when Lydia comes home to visit, because Alice so wants her to go back to school and Lydia gets defensive about that. But when the wilderness in the Howland household becomes unmanageable, Lydia moves back home to help care for her mother. One day, they have this conversation:

“You’re so beautiful,” says Alice. “I’m afraid of looking at you and not knowing who you are.”

“I think that even if you don’t know who I am someday, you’ll still know that I love you.”

“What if I see you, and I don’t know that you’re my daughter, and I don’t know that you love me?”

“Then, I’ll tell you that I do, and you’ll believe me.”

Alice is being accompanied by her family in the wilderness of this devastating disease.

The Hebrews in the wilderness are accompanied by God through the leadership of Moses. Again and again when a crisis arises, Moses prays, questions, complains, and talks to God and God tells Moses what to do. God is with them in the pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire at night. God is with them providing the food and water they keep complaining about.

Surely, the ultimate form of accompaniment is God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh to dwell among us. Emmanuel means ‘God with us.’

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We will be accompanied by God in any and every wilderness we may come to.

Well, it’s hard not to just end the sermon on that wonderful passage from Romans 8, but I have to say something about Lament. There are at least 65 Psalms of lament in the Bible, but we don’t read them very often in church. They are powerful, poignant expressions of complaint, sorrow, remorse, weariness, anger, doubt and disappointment. And they are explicitly addressed to God. Joyce Rupp, the author of The Cup of our Life talks about them this way:

I used to be too nice with God when I was feeling like a broken cup. I realize now that not being honest with God about my situation only added to my anger and hostility. Keeping it all inside, trying to hide it, benefited no one and only generated more self-pity and resentment… The Jewish Psalms have taught me a lot about how to pray when life is tough. The Psalmist yells, screams, and pokes a finger at God now and then in accusatory blame. The Psalmist wonders why God isn’t making some changes.

Jesus’ words from the cross from Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is his lament in the wilderness of suffering and death.

There is yet one more dynamic to mention; it’s the one that holds all of them. I’m calling it Redemption and Rebirth.

The divorce that was so painful and difficult turned out to be life- giving for both of us. I can’t imagine my life without the past 25 years of experience and growth.

In the midst of the hardships and struggles in the wilderness, the escaped Hebrew slaves found a new identity. They were formed into a community that would become a “light to the nations.“

In the closing scene of the movie, Lydia the actress channels Alice to give her mother’s life back to her for a brief moment in these healing words:

Alice watched and listened and focused beyond the words the actress spoke. She saw her eyes become desperate, searching, pleading for truth. She saw them land softly and gratefully on it. Her voice felt at first tentative and scared. Slowly, and without getting louder, it grew more confident and then joyful, playing sometimes like a song. Her eyebrows and shoulders and hands softened and opened, asking for acceptance and offering forgiveness. Her voice and body created an energy that filled Alice and moved her to tears. She squeezed the beautiful baby in her lap and kissed his sweet-smelling head.

The actress stopped and came back into herself. She looked at Alice and waited.

“Okay, what do you feel?”

“I feel love. It’s about love.”

Life is hard; our losses are real. There are all kinds of wilderness places and the snakes are there. Yet we are forever held in covenant with a higher power that draws us forward.  Through Reframing, Accompaniment, Lament, Redemption and Rebirth, we will find the way through no way because God will never let us go. God will wipe away all tears and turn our mourning into joy.

As we know all too well, there is no schedule for all this; resurrections usually take much longer than three days, but the covenant is sure.  We will be held, guided, and sustained by the One who says: “My grace is sufficient for you; for my power is made perfect in weakness.

In the name of our God, who creates us, redeems us, sustains us, and hopes for our wholeness. Amen

“Healing in the Wilderness”

Rev. Trish Greeves

Pilgrimage UCC, Marietta, GA

Sermon based on Numbers 21:4-9; John 3:14-17

March 8, 2015   (Lent 3 – B)                                                               “The Ten Covenants”

Exodus 20:1-17

In seventh grade Social Studies class in my hometown in Florida, our assignment was to write a report on one of the 50 states.  I chose Alabama.  I’d been born there.  My dad still lived there. I felt connected to “The Cotton State” and was glad to write a report on it…

…until Mr. Maple, my teacher, said, “I’ve never had any use for the state of Alabama.”  I couldn’t believe my ears.  How could he reject the state in which I was born???

Fast forward to 2003.  That’s when “Roy Moore, Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, refused to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments (which he had commissioned) from the Alabama Judicial Building despite orders to do so from a federal judge.  On November 13, 2003, the Alabama Court of the Judiciary unanimously removed Moore from his post as Chief Justice” (Wikipedia).  Remember that?

I don’t know about you, but that was one of those times I was embarrassed to be associated with other Christians.  I thought I was having a flashback a couple of weeks ago when Moore– who in 2012 was again elected Chief Justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court–encouraged probate judges in Alabama to defy a federal decision to lift the ban on gay marriage in the state.

Though I still love my native state, I’m beginning to understand Mr. Maple’s summary dismissal of Alabama.   (In contrast, this week probate judges in Georgia began adjusting the language on marriage documents in advance of the change that is sure to come to Georgia law.)

Do you ever feel like you have more in common with people of other faiths than you do with fellow Christians?  I sure do…and not just the ones in Alabama.  Every time I hear someone reject the church because of what particular Christians say or do, it makes me sad.  I’m reminded of what Mahatma Gandhi once said: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”  Sometimes, I’m not so fond of Christians either.

What do we do with Christians who live the faith so differently from the way we live it?  Ironically, I think we can find help in the Ten Commandments…not only in their content, but in the very fact of their existence.

A couple of weeks ago when we looked at the flood story, we heard from a character in a novel who said: “Give people a system of justice…and they will not become depraved.”  That’s exactly what happens in the story we’re hearing today.  In the stories of Noah and Abraham, God makes covenant with human beings.  In the Ten Commandments, God gives people the means of knowing how to keep covenant with God.

That was huge in ancient Israel’s time.  Most people in the ancient world didn’t have a clue what their gods expected.  The gods’ actions were so arbitrary that trying to please them was little more than guesswork. Israel’s covenant with God—this idea that deity and people were in mutual, if not equal, relationship—was a significant theological innovation for that time. Now faithfulness to God wasn’t guesswork; it literally was written in stone.

So, the fact of the commandments—the fact that they had them—was a big deal. But what about their content? What must we do in order to stay faithful to our covenant with God?

One version of the Commandments is included on the cover of your bulletin.  Someone read the first three.  (Read)

• Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

• Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images.

• Thou shall not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain.

What are those commandments about?  They’re about our relationship with God.  It’s like a marriage.  If we’re really going to commit ourselves to our spouse, we can’t go off galavanting with other people.  The same is true with God.  If we want to commit ourselves to God, we can’t go off galavanting with other gods.

Somebody read the next one. (Read)  Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy. Sabbath.  Rest.   Essentially, remember who you are.

Someone read the rest of them. (Read)

Honor thy father and thy mother.

Thou shalt not kill.

Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Though shalt not steal.

Thou shalt not bear false witness.

Thou shalt not covet.

What are these last commandments about?  They’re about our relationships with other people—Honor the ‘rents. Don’t kill, commit adultery, steal, lie, or covet.

To sum up the Ten Commandments—The first three are about remembering and respecting God. The one about Sabbath is about remembering and respecting ourselves. The rest of them are about remembering and respecting other people. Several years ago a UCC new church start in Atlanta called itself “God, Self, and Neighbor.”  Their name said it all.  So did Jesus. When asked to name the greatest commandment, he replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment.  The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

So, though the Ten Commandments might seem a little constrictive at first–especially when we see them written in stone–they actually were quite innovative for the time in which our ancestors in faith dreamed up this story.  That God would seek to be in mutual relationship with people?  And would offer guidelines for how to remain faithful in our relationship with God?  A faithfulness that hinges on how we treat others? Huge!

All that sounds good, but it doesn’t explain how people of Christian faith can understand things so differently. Some of us–as we’re doing today–read the Ten Commandments metaphorically.  We find in them assurance of God’s love for us and God’s covenant always to be our God–to the thousandth generation.  At the same time, other Christians recreate the Ten Commandments in stone or wood and impose them on everyone else.  What does the thoughtful Christian do with these differences?

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. The Civil Rights Act had been signed into law in 1964, but voting rights were not part of that law. Many southern states were still making it difficult—in some cases, impossible—for African Americans to register to vote. The people of Selma, Alabama, weary of having their attempts to register to vote constantly rebuffed, organized a march from Selma to Montgomery, the state’s capital.

The marchers lined up in twos at Brown Chapel AME Church and began the journey out of town. John Lewis and Hosea Williams led the way. As they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the marchers were met by law officers bearing clubs and tear gas. You perhaps have seen pictures of John Lewis (now a U.S. representative from Georgia) wearing a light-colored rain coat, with a back pack slung over his shoulder. Assuming he’d be jailed, Lewis had packed some books, a toothbrush, an apple and an orange—things he thought he’d need for a stay in jail.

As it turned out, jailing the marchers wasn’t what the lawmen had in mind. As Lewis, Williams and the others knelt to pray, the troopers advanced on them, beating them with the clubs and shooting canisters of tear gas into the crowd.

Here’s the thing that’s so hard to understand—nearly everyone present on the Edmund Pettus Bridge that day would have called himself or herself a faithful Christian. And yet, their actions were different as night and day.

I’m guessing the Christians most of us would have identified with that afternoon on the Edmund Pettus Bridge would have been the marchers.  Jesus’ admonition to love God and neighbor is pretty clear, right?

But what do we do with people of our own Christian faith who—in our estimation—pervert the Gospel message of God’s love for every person?  What do we do with our brothers and sisters in Christ who seem to hope for something other than the wholeness of others?

In truth, I don’t know.  I’ve been trying to figure it out since I was a teenager, called to pastor and unable to hear that call because my church told me women couldn’t be pastors.

So, I can’t say with certainty what to do with fellow Christians who don’t seem—to us—to follow Christ…but I’ll tell you what I do—and I don’t know if this is right or wrong—but I ignore them.  I ignore those who understand the Christian faith differently from the way I understand it, because to engage them in debate is a losing cause.  Believe me.  I’ve tried.

Engaging those who live the Christian faith so differently from the way we live it takes time and energy away from actually living our faith.  We can spend our lives debating Christians who understand the Gospel differently from us…or we can spend it doing what we believe we, as Christians, are called to do—love God with all our hearts, minds, and souls, and love our neighbors as ourselves.  We can spend our time opposing those who we think have it wrong, or we can spend our time doing what we think is right—acting others into well-being in God’s name.   It’s true that fellow Christians also are our neighbors; we are called to love them, too.  But, as John Wesley once said:  “We need not think alike to love alike.”

If, like me, you have to work at loving Christians who think differently from you, I invite you to sing with me now.  May we too, someday, be known only by our love.

We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord, And we pray that all unity may one day be restored.

And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

We will walk with each other, we will walk hand in hand, And together we’ll spread the news that God is in our land

We will work with each other, we will work side by side, And we’ll guard each one’s dignity and save each one’s pride.

All praise to our Creator, from whom all things come, And all praise to Christ Jesus, in whom love was begun, And all praise to the Spirit, whose love makes us one.

As we gather at table today, I invite us to remember these words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

“We must not make the mistake of judging other faiths by their least attractive features or adherents.”  “We should want to deal with other faiths at their best and highest, as they define themselves, and not shoot down the caricatures that we want to put up.”  (16, in God Is Not a Christian and Other Provocations)

If we had enough letters and enough space, that’s a message I’d love to see on our sign.  Among some people, there is little interest these days in learning the tenets of other faiths “at their best and highest”….especially the Islamic faith.

How much do you know about Islam?  How much time have you spent studying the faith?  How much time have you spent with faithful Muslims learning from them what their faith means to them?  If you’re like me, not much.

Today, as a way of standing in solidarity with people of the Islamic faith, we’re using pita for communion.  The ritual is our regular Christian ritual of communion.  But within the context of this sacrament of our Christian faith, the invitation is to remember our Muslim brothers and sisters, especially those who are bearing the brunt of Islamophobia… because God loves all God’s children.  God hopes for the wholeness of us ALL.

On the night of Jesus’ betrayal, he and his friends shared a sacrament of their Jewish faith—the seder meal.  While they were eating, Jesus lifted a piece of unleavened bread—a reminder to those gathered of the haste with which their ancestors had to flee religious persecution.  Jesus said, “This is my body.  Broken for you.  Eat this and remember me.”

In the same way, he also took the cup.  He raised it…and blessed it… and spoke to those covenant people about a new covenant.  “Drink from this, all of you.  For this is my blood of the new covenant which is given for many.  I tell you I will never again drink of this fruit of the vine until I drink it new with you in God’s kin-dom.”

Let us pray.

Gracious God, we thank you for this sacrament—a sacrament with origins in the faith of our Jewish cousins.  We also are grateful for our brothers and sisters of others faiths.  Today, as we eat and drink, we remember our brothers and sisters of the Islamic faith.  As Jesus’ disciples ate in solidarity with one who was about to suffer religious persecution, today we eat and drink in solidarity with all who suffer religious intolerance and persecution.  Meet us in the bread and juice.  Help us stay open to learning whatever you’re trying to teach us through this sacrament today.  Amen.

(Sharing the elements.)

Let us pray.  Holy One, thank you for meeting us in the bread, in the juice, in the fellowship of this table today.  As we leave this place—strengthened by this holy meal—help us to imagine new ways to act into well-being your children in other faiths.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Thanks to the internet, images of atrocities committed in the name of religion are becoming common-place–the picture of Kayla Mueller; the rallies in Paris and Copenhagen to honor those killed by radicalized militants; the arraignment of the man in Raleigh, North Carolina, in the shooting deaths of 3 Muslim neighbors; 21 orange-clad Coptic Christians escorted by armed, masked militants along a beach in Libya…. reports of their beheadings…

So many violent images seared into our psyches.  Human beings are wired for only so much trauma.  Once our capacity for horror is reached, we shut down.  We have to.  It’s the only way we—the only way our humanity–can survive.

With the emergence of terrorists who call themselves the Islamic State, our world-wide human community seems to have taken a sharp turn for the inhumane.  The utter and complete disregard for the dignity of human life — I.  Do.  Not.  Get.  It.  The actions of ISIS have moved so far beyond other acts of terror…  How can the international community respond?  How can countries with Muslim majorities respond?  How can people of faith—of any faith—respond?

I’m not in a position to answer the first two questions.  I have no expertise in international diplomacy.  And I certainly don’t have expertise in the workings of countries with Muslim majorities.  But as a Christian minister, I do have some thoughts about how people of faith might respond to the horrors being perpetrated these days in the name of religion…

…those thoughts, in part, grow out of the scene in today’s Scripture story. Genesis 17 relates the fourth time God makes a covenant with Abraham, the ancestor formerly known as Abram. The first time, God calls Abram “to go from his country and his kindred to a land God will show him.” I think the lady in my phone would be cross if I asked her to take me “to the land God will show me.” J God also says, “I will make of you a great nation.”

Time passes, things happen…and Abram’s confidence in the covenant must flag, because God makes the promise a second time. “I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth.” Some more things happen, then God again promises Abram a great reward.

Three times now God has promised Abram a great reward, lots of descendants. Abram, understandably, is getting impatient. He has no descendants. And he and Sarai aren’t getting any younger. How in the world is he supposed to be the father of many nations when he hasn’t even become the father of one person? He suggests to God that maybe his slave will be his heir. God says, No. Your descendant will be your own flesh and blood.

Anxious to get the whole many-descendants thing going, Sarai comes up with a plan. She offers her servant, Hagar, to Abram so he can have a child by her. Because it was common practice in their culture, Abram does what Sarai suggests. Ishmael is born. Then Sarai promptly instructs Abram to expel Hagar and Ishmael from the community.

It’s after all this has happened that God comes to Abram the 4^th time. By now, Abram is 99 years old. Again, God makes covenant with Abram—“I will make you exceedingly numerous. You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations.” Then God changes Abram’s name to Abraham—father of nations. “I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.”

What might all this covenant-making between God and Abraham suggest for people of faith as we try to respond to what’s happening in our world today in the name of religion?   The first thing is to remember that Abraham is an ancestor for many faiths, including the “big three”—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The story of God’s promises to Abraham isn’t just ours. It’s a story we share with people of other faiths.

Abraham isn’t all we share with people of other faiths. I’m part of a group called the Cobb Interfaith Spiritual Leaders. Once a month, we gather to share a meal and talk together. At our last meeting, each of us related what our faith means to us. It was evident in our sharing that each of us takes our faith very seriously. That’s one thing we have in common—our strong commitment to our respective faith traditions.

Another thing faiths have in common—both good and evil have been committed in the name of all religions. ISIS. The Crusades. Buddhists in Myanmar. We all have our dirty laundry, the crazies who co-opt the faith and turn it into something it was never meant to be. Archbishop Desmond Tutu has an important reminder for us: “We must not make the mistake of judging other faiths by their least attractive features or adherents.”  “We should want to deal with other faiths at their best and highest, as they define themselves, and not shoot down the caricatures that we want to put up.”  (16) A helpful word in this time of religious radicalism.

Another thing faiths have in common: all religions respect the dignity of creation, a respect that leads to compassionate action in the world. The Golden Rule graphic on your bulletins as it is represented in many faiths, illustrates that commitment well. That’s copied from a poster given to me by one of my Cobb Interfaith colleagues, a person from the Ba’hai faith.

So, the fact that Abraham is an ancestor for more than one faith reminds us of just how much people of different faiths have in common.

At the same time, the story of Abraham’s covenant with God also reminds us that each faith is unique.

I remember visiting the Dome of the Rock on my first trip to Jerusalem in 1992. That’s the gold-domed building on the Temple Mount you’ve no doubt seen pictures of. Under that beautiful golden dome lies a large flat stone called the Foundation Stone. Islam and Judaism (and, therefore, Christianity) associate many of their faith’s stories with that rock. For Jews it’s where creation began. (It’s sometimes called “the navel of the world.”) It’s also where Cain, Abel, and Noah worshiped God, where Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac, where Jacob dreamed of angels ascending and descending a ladder. For Muslims, it’s thought to be the place to which the prophet Muhammad traveled in the Night Journey.

When I saw that stone, I was struck by how a single place, a single object could hold such devotion for people of different faiths, but for completely different reasons. As a Christian, it meant something different to me than it did to Jews or Muslims who visit the site.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe about religions. All of them—including Christianity—are flawed. Yet all of them try—through rituals, sacred writings, and acts of compassion—to connect with God and with other people. God is so much more than any one religion. It’s not possible for one religion to get it all right. We need each other to help us see God more fully, we need each other to understand the world and its inhabitants more wholly.

No one of us has a corner on the God-market. But in our sharing together, when we hear from Jews about their understanding of God and from Muslims about Allah and from Hindus about all their gods and from Buddhists about their sacred practices and from B’ahai about their faith and Sikhs and Jains and Native Americans and Pagans…   When we learn about all these other faiths from the people who practice them, our picture of God will be more complete. And, though it seems counterintuitive, our own Christian faith will be strengthened.

After making covenant with Abraham, God tells him Sarah will conceive and bear a son. Abraham’s response to this news? He falls “on his face laughing and says, ‘Can a child be born to man who is a hundred years old?  Can Sarah, who is 90 years old, bear a child?’”

If you keep reading, you’ll see that—Yes.  Though it seemed impossible, laughable, even, a 100 year old man and a 90 year old woman can have a child together.  And, because no faith should take itself too seriously, when that child is born, you’ll name him Isaac, which means “laughter.”

That’s the third lesson from today’s story—when the way forward seems laughable, a fool’s folly…If we keep working at it, eventually, the promise just might be fulfilled.

…even the promise of peace in a world torn by violence.  It’s easy to feel helpless or angry or vengeful when we hear of yet another mass shooting or beheading…but if we can respond to even the most inhuman acts with bold humanity, if our response to every new report of violence can be an act of compassion, if all the world’s religions will live out their belief in the dignity of all human beings…  I know.  It seems laughable…but then, just maybe, we could fulfill God’s dream of harmony in all creation.

The song I sang earlier—“One Grain of Sand”…it reminds us that we’re all part of the puzzle—all people, all faiths.  Each of us can only do our part…but if each of us does do our part, if each of us brings our one grain of sand, eventually—I know.  It seems laughable!—but eventually, the beach will be built….a beach where people of all faiths will play and talk and share stories and hopes and dreams for the world.  A place where we will always and only act each other into well-being.   A place where we will plan and work together on repairing the world.

“One Grain of Sand”

In the name of our God, who creates us, redeems us, sustains us, and hopes for our wholeness.  Amen.

Kimberleigh Buchanan  © 2015

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. ²And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.” ³Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him,

⁴“As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. ⁵No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. ⁶I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you.

⁷I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.

¹⁵God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. ¹⁶I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”

God said to Noah, There’s gonna be a floody, floody…  the animals going into the ark by twosies, twosies and coming out by threesies, threesies… The rainbow in the sky.  God’s promise never to destroy the earth again.  It’s a familiar story, one just about everyone knows.

Do you ever wonder what was going on behind the scenes, below the deck?  What was it like to live on a boat in the rain with animals and odors and in-laws?  What was it like to be cooped up in a big wooden box for 6 months?  In short, what was it like to be Mrs. Noah?

Mrs. Noah Speaking: I suppose under the circumstances there’s really no point in complaining but really! Noah and I had just got accustomed to living alone and having some peace and quiet and fixing up the house the way we wanted it at last.

I brought up three boys, wiped their runny noses, changed their messy diapers, washed, sewed, cooked, saw to it that they had the proper advantages.  We got them safely married (though if I didn’t know it before I know it now; their wives leave a great deal to be desired).  We liked having them come to visit us on the proper holidays, bringing the babies, taking enough food home to feed them for a week, and Noah and I could go to bed in peace.

And now look what has happened!  Sometimes I think it would have been simpler to have drowned with everybody else- at least their troubles are over.  And here we are jammed in this Ark – why didn’t the Lord give Noah enough time to build a big enough ark if He wanted him to build one at all?  The animals take up almost all the room and Noah and I are crowded together with Shem, Ham and Japheth, their slovenly wives and noisy children, and nowhere to go for a moment’s peace.

Noah, of course, has hidden several elephant’s skins of wine somewhere, and when the rain and noise and confusion get too bad he goes down to the dirty hold with the beasts and gets drunk, sleeps it off on the dirty straw, and then comes up to bed smelling of armadillo dung and platypus pee.  

Not that I blame him . . . It’s my daughters-in-law who get me.  They insist on changing the beds every time I turn around.  They won’t use a towel more than once, and they’re always getting dressed up and throwing their dirty linen at me to wash, the washing is easy enough – we’ve plenty of water – But how do they expect me to get anything dry in all this rain?  I don’t mind doing the cooking, but they’re always coming out to the kitchen to fix little snacks with the excuse that it will help me: “You’re so good to us, Mother Noah, we’ll just do this for you,” and they never put anything away where it belongs.

They’ve lost one of my measuring cups and they never clean the stove and they’ve broken half of the best china that came down to us from Grandfather Seth. When the babies squall in the night, who gets up with them?  Not my daughters-in-law.  “Oh, Mother Noah’ll do it. She loves the babies so.”  Ham’s wife is always stirring up quarrels, playing people off against each other.  Shem’s wife who never does anything for anybody, manages to make me feel lazy and mean if I ask her to dry one dish.  Japheth’s wife is eyeing Shem and Ham; she’ll cause trouble; mark my words.

Today that silly dove Noah is so fond of came back with an olive twig on his beak. Maybe there’s hope that we’ll get out of this Ark after all.

We’ve landed! At last! Now we can get back to normal and have some peace and quiet and if I put something where it belongs it will stay there and I can clean up this mess and get some sleep at night and –  Noah! Noah! I miss the children!  (by Madeleine L’Engle)

Noah’s Ark.  A nice story…until you consider the details.  A boat packed with animals of every ilk makes for great artwork…but in reality, it makes for great work.  Eight family members on a small boat with animals sounds cozy…but the reality?  Not so much.

And what about the people who didn’t make it onto the boat, the ones who died in the flood?  Despite what the song said, everything did not turn out hunky dory for everyone in the story.  How could a loving God destroy everyone on earth except one family?  That’s where the details of this story get uncomfortable.  It’s the part of the story a recent novel addresses.

Re Jana, the daughter of the construction foreman hired to oversee the building of the ark, narrates In the Shadow of the Ark.  At several points, her father quarrels with Noah about the goodness of a God who would kill nearly the whole human race.  “How should I imagine this Unnameable god of yours?” he says at one point.  “Like an eternally raging hurricane?  But who can possibly stay angry for the length of time this plan is taking?”

“He is disappointed rather than angry,” [Noah] says.

“If disappointment drives him, he must make clear what he expects…there should be no doubt about what his wishes are.  Only then can he justify punishment.”

“Many things are so obvious they do not need rules.”

“Those with that sort of understanding are rare.  Many live in ignorance.  And what is learned now will soon be forgotten again.  What makes you confident your god will not do the same thing all over again in 500 years, to your children and your children’s children?  That he will not destroy your cities again and will not butcher your descendants?”

[Noah] says: “The Unnameable does not bear malice. He has only become tired of human kind. I have long discussions with Him, and I assure you, He does not act rashly. His spirit will not quarrel with us for eternity. Believe me, after this, there will be clear rules, commandments, and prohibitions that are so plain they will not need explanations.”

The foreman shakes his head.  “I do not ask for rules.  I ask for judgment, the understanding that makes it possible to deviate from the rules if the need arises.”

“That understanding too will come. With the passing of time. And with (hu)mankind’s maturing.”

“Is this then the time of beginning, the time of mistakes and trials?  To me it sounds more like the end time.  It seems to me that soon everything will be finished.”

“Let us say that a new time is coming.”

“A new time for whom?  For a handful of candidates?  That is reprehensible.”

“It is the crime that is reprehensible, not the punishment.”

“How can there be a question of crime for a people that does not have a system of justice?”  “Give this people a system of justice…and they would not become depraved.  No god would find it necessary to destroy them…. Talk your god around, appeal to his reason… Or is the Unnameable destroying us for your benefit?  So that you will be able to live in a better world?”   (Provoost, Anne.  In the Shadow of the Ark.  New York: Berkley Books, 2001 [translation, 2004], 218-19)

Hard questions…and, no doubt, questions many of us have asked of this story.  What are thoughtful people of faith, those who believe in a loving God, to make of such a story?

The first thing we do is read the story of Noah’s Ark as just that—a story.  Throughout history, people have used stories to help make sense of things that happen to them…things like massive floods.  The geologic record reveals many floods in antiquity.  Every culture that experienced a flood made up a story about it.  Why?  To have some control over it, right?  If we know what caused the flood, we can prevent the next one.

Our Judeo-Christian flood myth is no different.  Like other flood stories, the story of Noah’s Ark helped our ancestors to explain what was happening.  It gave them a feeling of control over a completely out-of-control event.  By calling the flood God’s punishment for their “wickedness,” they could avoid another flood by becoming more righteous.

The place where our story diverges from other flood myths is at the point of the rainbow.  Listen:  ⁹“I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, ¹⁰and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. ¹¹I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

The sign of the covenant is a “bow set in the sky,” which could be something like a constellation, but I like the traditional interpretation of a rainbow…because rainbows contain every color that exists.  Anything we see, the hue of any flower, the pigment of any person’s skin, the shade of any creature on earth—any color that exists is in the rainbow… which makes it the perfect symbol of the covenant God makes with Noah after the flood.  With the rainbow, God is saying, “My love and care extend to every living thing.”

…which begs the question:  If God’s protection and love are for everyone, shouldn’t ours be also?  I’m sure we all would answer yes to that question.  If such a flood threatened today, would we build an ark just for members of our own family or faith family?  No.  We wouldn’t think of it.  We’d agree with Re Jana, who said:  “To save (hu)mankind, you need a fleet, not a single vessel.  What sort of god carries all his eggs in one basket?”  (293)

Our ancestors in faith understood the first flood to be the judgment of an angry God. But based on how they ended the story—by expressing concern and love for all creatures and people—maybe they learned a little from retelling the story over the centuries.  Maybe they learned that judgment now rests, not in God’s hands, but  in ours.  Will we hire people to build the boat then close the door on them when the rains begin?

Or will we build a fleet?  Will we crowd all the animals and one very human family into a tiny boat?  Or will we build enough boats for all the construction workers and their families?  I’m pretty sure that today, we’d build a fleet…enough boats for everyone, enough vessels to save everyone.

And, because she liked it so well, we’d build one tiny boat for Mrs. Noah, her husband, her children…and the platypus.

In the name of our God, who creates us, redeems us, sustains us, and hopes for our wholeness.  Amen.

Kimberleigh Buchanan  ©  2012

Genesis 9:8-17

⁸Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ⁹“As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, ¹⁰and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. ¹¹I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

¹²God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: ¹³I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, ¹⁵I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. ¹⁶When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” ¹⁷God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”