Are You Afraid

 Are You Afraid

A Sermon Preached at Vashon United Methodist Church

Mark Fredericksen, ND, MDiv

June 23, 2024

Job 38:1-11

Mark 4:35-41

 

When I was a wee lad, my sister and I would be left at my aunt and uncle’s in Soap Lake for a week or two in summer, and then my three female cousins would come to stay with us in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, for the same amount of time—giving both sets of parents a break from our hell-raising ways. I, being the boy amongst the rest, was never the troublemaker.  But I digress.  One of these summers in Soap Lake, I was around 8 years old; it was getting on toward evening, and a thunderstorm was moving in.  My uncle always felt sorry for my lone maleness amidst all the females and would try to do something with me when he got home from work.  On this particular evening, he said, “Let’s take my rubber raft to the north end of the lake and row back down to their house, a distance of probably a mile or two. My aunt, being a mom, raised questions about the sanity of this venture – “have you seen the weather?”  But my uncle – pshawed her – and handed her the car keys so she could chauffer us to the north end of the lake.  They argued on the way, my aunt memorably saying, “If you drown him, I and my sister are going to kill you.”

 

Fast forward to setting off in the rubber raft.  We got in the boat; you may be slightly relieved to know that he had brought a life jacket that he put on me.  You should also know that I am from another planet because, for my entire life, I’ve known that I cannot swim a lick – I have a denser mass than most humans, and I sink in water. Innumerable people have tried to teach me to drown, I mean float, and I just go straight to the bottom, so now I just avoid water over my head.   We started rowing.  We are making decent progress, and we’re about halfway; I’m having a ball. We’re cracking jokes.  The waves are getting a little higher; occasionally, one sloshes over the side of the boat, but it’s like a riotous fun roller coaster ride to me.  But the sky is getting darker.  Some lightning flashes are visible behind the cliffs around the lake. And a wind out of the south is blowing pretty large waves at us by now and even pushing us. More concerning, my uncle's demeanor changed from jovial to serious as he said, “We need to row harder and watch for large waves to turn the boat into them. The change on his face from smiling to grimly focused scared me.

 

So, when I read this gospel lesson, I am right on board with those disciples, knowing all about the fear of waves and storms. Jesus is not rowing.  He is asleep on a cushion.  So, while it was only on his orders that they had to “go to the other side,” putting them in this pickle, he isn’t helping at all.  And like me, they thought they were going to die.  We could take a simplistic surface view of this story and chalk it up simply as a miracle story of Jesus having authority over the wind and waves and move on with a “Trust and Obey” kind of hymn. And there would be nothing wrong with that.

 

But Jesus' question to them, “Why are you afraid?” (Other translations say, “Why are you cowardly?”) piques my curiosity.  Doesn’t it yours too?  To look a bit deeper, it’s helpful to explore the context of looking for the author’s placement and possible purpose in telling this story here in this way, as well as knowing a bit about the culture and geographical/demographic layout of the area.

 

So far in Mark, Jesus has been teaching and healing among the predominantly Jewish population on the right side of the lake to the point he’s exhausted.  Suddenly, with no warning, he is throwing a huge monkey wrench in his Jewish disciples’ wheelhouse stating flatly – “Let’s go to the other side.”  The other side of the dividing line – the Sea of Galilee – where on the other side meant going to the Gentile side, the side where no good Jews go.  The side where the riff-raff, weirdos, and unclean live.   So, the weather disturbance taking place on the water also perhaps reflects the disciples’ internal emotional state and discomfort being pushed out of their comfort zone.  He is pushing them beyond their safe boundaries.  And maybe I’m alone, but I always feel a little edgy or a crabby pants when I’m pushed out there.  In the disciples’ minds, a taboo is being broken, and meanwhile, Jesus is sleeping on a cushion.

 

The other note I can add is the gospel’s structural setup.  This story is happening as Jesus’ venue of ministry takes a marked shift.  What immediately follows this passage is that they land at Gennesaret, where they come upon the crazy man with a legion of demons in the cemetery; then, on those heels, they have Jairus’ dead daughter to deal with and the woman who had been bleeding for years.  So Jesus is widening faith’s boundaries – he’s reaching out to a far wider circle of hurting people where wealth, nationality, gender, and religion do not matter.  Along with this inclusiveness, is also woven Jesus’ sense of justice.  For Jesus, there is no partiality.  Oppression is oppression – in death, in mental state, in health, in spirit and it is incumbent on the faithful, if you’re going to be hanging out with Jesus, to be laboring for the sake of justice.

 

So, knowing what we know now, we return to Jesus’ words and his question: Are we afraid or cowardly?   Is our faith boundary set to avoid challenge and change?  If we stay in our safe harbors, letting Jesus snooze in the back seat, is anything won for the Realm of God?  Most of us may not feel like we’re in a storm-tossed boat. But was Jesus aiming his criticism at their fear of the storm or was it aimed at their inner grumblings of having to open their safe zone to mingle with Gentiles?  And to bring the question home, perhaps uncomfortably so, of whom are we afraid, or where is our cowardliness holding us back?  You can hear me starting to make the shift here  – where I’m posing the questions not just for you personally but also for the group/community setting.  All of Jesus’ disciples in this day.

 

If we can answer the who we’re afraid of question, then we can ask what is the faithful response?  In short, the answer is simple.  “Get in the boat.”  There is an old Christian symbol of a cross in a boat. We’re living in the boat. The waves around us can be or are substantial – personal and the church and the country writ large.  There are storms underway.  But without faith to steer the boat - informed by Jesus’ own acts -- WE are libel to drift either into purposeless anxiety or a stagnant backwater where change is not even possible. These same cowering disciples went out not just across the lake to the other side – but across out of their known world in order to bring Jesus faith and justice to a planet – the size of which they could not begin to imagine.  So I leave you with this to ponder and perhaps discuss among yourselves in the coming weeks or months.  What’s steering the Vashon United Methodist Church boat?  Is it Jesus-faith & justice?  Or is it fear?  Where are you being called?  Across to the other side?  Or closer amongst your own?   Amen.  

The Realm of God is Like A Seed -

 The Realm of God is Like a Seed

Mark Fredericksen, ND, MDiv.

A Sermon Preached at Vashon United Methodist, June 16, 2024

 How many of you are gardeners?  My wife and I have gardened for a large portion of our married life, which is nearing 50 years.  In the Spring, we have the “garden debate” of whose job it is to do what.  I like to prepare the ground and plant the seeds, and for her to water, weed, and harvest.  Yeah.  She doesn’t like weeding any more than I do – so you can imagine the tensions that division of labor puts into our gardening.

I love the planting part because the seeds represent a potential for glimpsing the wideness of God’s Realm. I think I may have mentioned in my sermon here with you back in April that our concepts of God are too small. If our God is too small, then our faith will also be small.  So this week and next, I’m going to try to enlarge your glimpses of the God who cares for you, with a goal, hopefully, of blessing you with a more vibrant certainty because, as Paul said to the Corinthians, “We walk by faith, not by sight.” 

Because I have lived a large chunk of my life learning and every day using what is known about biology and chemistry with a little physics, I want to bring us around to view our faith in God from a whole different angle than we usually use when we’re in church. Angles are important.  If you want to see a rainbow, for instance, you have to be looking from the right angle. So here is another one.

It starts with seeds. Seeds, essentially, are power-packed stardust.  Jesus used seeds in parables intended to awaken faith.  He only had a tenth of the knowledge about seeds that exist today. The startling thing to me about them is that they’re so tiny relative to what they can become.  In the past couple of weeks, I have held a beet seed and a seed from a Sequoia tree in my hand, and they are about the same size & not that different in appearance.  But General Sherman, the name of one of the largest Sequoia trees in the world, down in California, is 31 feet in diameter and 275 feet tall, while a beet – well, you all probably know about how big a beet plant gets.  That’s really amazing, don’t you think?  God is amazing.  All the time.

But that’s just a simplistic beginning point. How do those two different seeds know what they’re supposed to become?  How did/does God write their calling into their being?  Thomas Merton, one of my favorite theologians, Roman Catholic, mystic and good-trouble-making priest (died too soon!), talks in his book Seeds of Contemplation how a tree gives glory to God just by being a tree.  It’s that simple.  You give glory to God just by being you. Just by being.  Being yourself. Not what you do, how much money you have, or what you accomplish by this world’s standards. The glory you give to God is just being you. Period. Now, let me insert here -- Glory is a tricky word that has always been hard for me to get my head around until I realized that it’s the God-Light, the interstellar glow of eternity that God places within each of us at our birth.  One of the old Catechisms asks, “What is the purpose of human beings?”  And the answer is, “The purpose of the human being is to give glory to God.”  So, how cool is that?  That God puts God’s-light, that interstellar glow of eternity --God’s glory-- within us so that we already have what we need to reflect that outwardly back to Godself.  Do you feel the glory?  Perhaps it’s like the mud Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer got slapped on his nose to stop the glow?  It doesn’t remove the glow; it just hides it.  All the shadows, negative self-talk, and ancient power games religious hierarchies played spooning us fear of hell in order to extract money or labor for big cathedrals and shore up a Bishop’s own lack of self-worth?   Sin it is labeled.  Maybe all we need to do is polish up our fogged-over mirror with Love such that through us, others can see God.  1 Corinthians 13 – at first we see dimly, but then face-to-face.  That’s a lot to take in.  Let’s just sit with this a minute and let it soak into our being.  At your birth, the glory, the God-Light, was bestowed upon you.  Nothing can take that from you.  All that is required is to be yourself the best you can be to fulfill the only real purpose God wants or needs from you. Faith is not about doing but about being. Some of us turn out to be Sequoia trees and some weeds, but you know it is all okay because all are equal in God’s sight, appreciation, love, and embrace.

How does a tree or any plant or any living being (or you) know what it is supposed to be?

I’ll tell you how—at least from what humans have learned about the process. It’s all wrapped in a complicated molecule we call DNA. How do I know that DNA is God’s tool of choice in making us? A) Because DNA is so foundational to the blueprint of life itself.  99.9% of your DNA is the same as anyone else you meet. You’re not very doggone different from the person you love or the one you hate.  We share 85-98% of the same DNA with other mammals.  Heck, we share 60% of the same DNA as fruit flies and bananas!  B)  Because of just how impossibly difficult and unlikely it would be for any life to be here at all. DNA is a very uniquely structured molecule. It is made up of thousands, perhaps a million atoms. Five essential atoms: Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus, and Nitrogen were spawned along with the other 93 naturally occurring elements in the furnaces of galaxies and exploding stars light-years from here.  So what are the odds of those elements landing here by random chance?  Through eons of time, they randomly gathered here from comets and meteors and space dust and our galaxy’s and solar system’s movement through the universe.  Then we’re asked by the atheist to believe they just randomly coalesced into a very complicated DNA molecule.   Look – a simple 30-digit combination lock where you need 3 numbers to unlock it has 4,062 possible combinations. If you have 93 elements and you need those 5 particular ones to get together the odds are 1 in 5.2 million. But those five alone don’t make DNA.  They have to be combined into sugars and phosphate groups and nucleotides and bound in a double helix hundreds of thousands of times.  Making the odds mind-numbingly overwhelmingly remote that the first DNA could have just fallen together. Leading me to the conclusion that purposeful loving intelligence with powers to manipulate very, very large bodies as well as quantum-sized particles has been and is at work.  And I will be so bold as to claim, based solely on faith, that human beings are catalysts in the process of Love Unfolding from here on in.

But it has never been enough in God’s mind to have a simplistic black & white world.  Sure, humans have played that game – the game of limiting choice, cutting back freedoms, indoctrinating and controlling one’s own tribe or clan, diminishing or eliminating the other, and hoarding resources. All of that is the antithesis of Love.  It goes against Creation.  It is not who we were created to be.  From Love, we came. In Love, we live. To Love, we return.  And our purpose while on this earth is to reflect God’s glory simply by being the beloved & loving creatures that God instilled us to be. Are you in?

The Connection of Gardening With The Cosmos

 "With what can we compare the Realm of God, or what parable will we use for it?  It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs and puts forth large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."  -- Mark 4:30

It's Springtime, and summer is approaching quickly. Gardens are getting planted or already are. I don't know about you, but every packet of seeds I open surprises me and amazes me with how small the seeds are.  However many billion years it has been since the startup of Project Creation, quantum particles, atoms, and molecules have been generated by the formation of stars and galaxies.  Those particles have traveled untold light years to coalesce on Planet Earth and form themselves into larger molecules that humans have come to call DNA - the blueprint for life.  Looking at a seed, the most amazing part is the DNA molecules packed into those seeds determine what the plant will be.  There is very little difference in size or weight between the seed of a Sequoia tree and a common beet --yet tiny differences in the DNA create all the different plants and their characteristics. The entire encyclopedia of fauna covering Planet Earth is present because of tiny seeds. Viewed even more broadly, all reproductive cells contain this myriad of physical properties we see in every form of life.

The act of gardening connects us through seeds, to the food they supply, and to the life that we possess for however long we have on Earth. We are all being fed by elements of stardust. Is that not a humbling realization?  Many people, a couple of weeks ago, marveled at the Northern Lights brought about by magnetic storms arising from sunspots,  Yet just as amazing is every seed that has ever taken root.  

So, how is this a parable for the Realm of God?  The Realm of God is grounded in diversity.  In all forms of life, enriching and expanding to interact and fill the Earth with good and beautiful things. It is rooted in the primordial birth of the universe, which I believe was (and is) the outpouring of God's love.  That may be too large to get one's head around, but then God incarnated in the form of Jesus to give us the tangible how-to manual on how to behave with one another.  Let's take that to heart. 

Cruelty Meets Holy Saturday - Reflection Meets Politics VI

 And the silence of the dawn arose after "It is finished."

For years, Holy Saturday felt weird to me. There was all the intensity of the prior week's ministrations—meals, solemn readings, funeral-esk music, sanctuary stripping, communion—and then this dead space of Holy Saturday. In my childhood church experience, the only thing that happened on Holy Saturday was my mother did her routine flower arranging for Easter morning and placed it on the altar at church for the next morning's anticipated celebration.   In my kid's understanding, Holy Saturday was a boring letdown.  My mom said that was the way it was supposed to feel.

"This is how it is supposed to feel"—when conscience and faith need to be consulted on the unfolding events in which one is involved. Holy Saturday is a pause. In one's conscience, what is happening? World events, even local events, can have disturbing impacts on our emotional life flow.  It is somewhat easy to push them aside with the brain's self-protection of, "It can't happen to me."  It feels as though that is our only means of coping. But the blows to one's sense of safety and protection feel the punch just the same.

• A friend's cancer diagnosis or fatal heart attack.  
• A mom and three children's lives are snuffed out by the flash of a teen's car speeding over 100 mph in a 40.
• An innocent random woman minding her own business driving to work is hit & killed by a bullet from a shooter in the woods. 
• A bridge collapses, and six construction workers are gone.
• Miniscule parachute drops are falling to feed thousands of starving Palestinians ironically while the intentional counteraction of killing them continues its relentless climb toward a million dead.
• The earth's "carrying capacity" is well beyond sustainable, yet voracious consumption of her resources continues, while in the halls of power, stuffed shirts quibble about the significance and validity of individual data points.

It is overwhelming to absorb all of the "it is finished" happenings.  We need a daily "Holy Saturday" to find a pause button and soak in the redeeming and calming silence—a day apart from the torrent—to reconnect with the Holy. 

Jesus' closing discourses were all about this life circumstance. Terror, destruction, and the end of life are not time-limited. They have always been and are a part of human existence—wars and rumors of wars, death, hatred, persecution—"yet not a hair of your head will perish.  By your endurance you will gain your lives" (Luke 21:18)  . Some Pollyanna language is put in Jesus' mouth, but Jesus' life example was not rooted in Pollyanna. Rather, he was pragmatic and hands-on.  As we endure and hold tight to faith in eternal existence, "the former will pass away, and all things will become new." (Rev 21)

We have Holy Saturday(s) to bathe in silent reflection on how our very DNA is entwined with the eternal love of God.  In love, we were born.  By love, we live. Through love, we return.  Regardless of the horrors of daily "crucifixions," we cannot succumb to the oceans of tears. We continue the mission to serve with kindness and empathy.  We arise again day after day, even after being beaten down, to walk the Good Road, to be living witnesses to the Eternal Love that cannot be extinguished.  Ever. 

  

Reflection on Faith and Politics - V -What Do You Want?

At the end of Chapter 10 in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is passing through Jericho when a blind man, Bartimaeus, yells out to him.  Bartimaeus causes such a ruckus that, in spite of the crowd trying to hush him up, Jesus turns and asks him, "What do you want from me?" 

Indeed, what do the masses of people clamoring to claim the Christian faith want from him today?  Many people claim to follow him yet hold a stubborn, obtuse belief in their own privileged position with Jesus.  They claim special rights for themselves as though Jesus commissioned them, in particular, to gather in only their own close friends and family -- that they determine what act Jesus will perform for the downcast - the hungry, the immigrant, the poor.  They are no different than the crowd then - scolding the needy and pushing them to the back of the line.  Perhaps this selfish grasping to hold Jesus only to themselves is why there are so many different churches across the United States landscape?  Perhaps the social toxicity of white privilege bought worldly political power so they could demand that Jesus bless them in their blindness rather than heal them? 

Greed, fear, and hardness of heart are not acts of Jesus. Greed and self-protection are not bedrocks of the Christian faith. They do not permit lovingkindness to thrive or other virtues to lift a society's care for the infinite number of ways trouble and hardship can strike any one of us without warning. In fact, the hardness of heart and the clutching pearls of privilege fuel desperation, which in turn leads to responses of violence, crime, and war.  There is no better example of this escalation in war and violence than the Hamas v. Israeli conflict. Healing this kind of human blindness will take far more than the retreat into silos of vengeful self-justification or hiding in hopes it won't breach our doors.

What we all want is a true pathway to peace and healing of all ills—social, physical, and emotional.  We won't get there if we are the noisy crowd shoving the needy to the rear or only watching out for Number 1.  Jesus' response to need was to notice it and do what he could to help.  This should be the faith model we could all adopt, remembering that frequently, all another person needs is a smile and to be seen.     

Reflection on Faith and Politics - IV: False v True Prophets

 "Stay alert or you may be led down a false path!" he told them.  "Many will come representing me, 'I am the Chosen One,' they will claim, and many will listen to their lies."  -- Mark 13:5-6 (First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament)

History is littered with false prophets and saviors  In each of their times and places, they have garnered their set of devout followers. To be a successful false prophet/savior the main ingredients have been personal charisma and the illusion of wealth or success.  Oftentimes, the ruse was most often aided by having a small cadre of conspirators to mingle in the crowd and "attest" to the miracles claimed by the prophet.  They are all in on the fleecing. Gallons of snake oil have been hawked on legions of gullible, unsuspecting souls. 

So what sets Jesus (or any truly helpful prophet/teacher) apart from the riff-raff?  How can we discern authentic wisdom, action, or advice?  I'd offer these suggestions.  

One is that the teacher/prophet does not gain financially from their followers. Authentic wisdom is not for sale. The corollary is also true—the more one has to pay to acquire the "wisdom" (or "secret"), the more worthless it is.

Two, if the profit motive is removed, then one's intuition or internal spirit voice can more accurately discern the truth or value of the advice.  If the person hearing can apply or incorporate the teaching into their life with positive net results, one can more readily trust the truth.

Third, most validly wise teaching/advice is grounded in furthering positive virtues such that not only is an individual aided by the teaching, but the larger community benefits as well.  Examples include virtues such as love, compassion, kindness, forgiveness, restoration/healing, and sharing.  Obviously, if the advice fosters more fear, greed, xenophobia, or violence, beware of the lies and do not follow (or aid) that false prophet. 

It is vividly apparent in our present-day political field whether candidates or individuals for public office meet the criteria above or not.  Let those with ears hear. 

Reflections on Faith & Politics - III -- Growing Together

  I am the vine. You are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit because apart from me, you can do nothing.  John 15:5

A very discordant social construct crept into humans' ways: the teaching that rugged individualism was noble. This construct metastasized during the U.S. "Wild West" (beginning roughly in the early 19th century.)  Caucasian individuals were given cheap or free acreages of land (taken from Native American tribes by force) to farm so as to develop the US from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans.  The myth that lives on today is that these brave, honorable people "pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps" and "made America what it is today."  Politically, still, there is implicit hearkening back to how "the West was won."  It is a belief that often colors discussions about labor, immigration, and the social safety net. Not until President Obama did any U.S. leader explicitly argue that all we had accomplished was the result of very large teams of individuals taking on large development projects together that benefited everyone.

Jesus was also making this connection.  Nobody can thrive in a total vacuum.  Human mental, spiritual, and physical health is rooted in the need for strong social connections and interactions.  The "lifeblood" of a human community is the cooperation that takes place between people.  Jesus' use of the vine and branches is an accurate metaphor. Together we are all fed.  Apart from one another, apart from our life together, things do not usually go well - certainly not for a very large number of individuals - the growing homeless population being a constant example, or the implicit suggestions that keeping a gun under your pillow will keep you (and your family safe.) 

What we see happening today in politics and socially is a sundering of cooperation and togetherness. The "Make America Great Again" slogan hearkens back to an era that never was and only exists in the lie of "self-made men"-- industrialists who robbed from the poor, destitute laborers, and vulnerable migrants/slaves.to hoard and amass tremendous wealth that in God's Realm on earth would have been shared equally with everyone. 

Jesus' teaching here encourages us to see ourselves as thriving plants that grow in response to connection to spirit and life. Together, we can bring kindness, understanding, and sharing for the good of all.  

   

  

Reflection on Faith & Politics -II -- Follow Me

 If any of you wish to be my follower, you must put aside your selfish ambition, shoulder your cross daily, and follow me.  Luke:923 

There are many messages (cultural & familial) and experiences in life that shape, mold, and color our brain's processing pathways.  These pathways are a major factor in determining our perception and interpretation of the world.  There are a number of social norms that feed into the inaccuracies we adopt.  Shame is a large one.  It plays havoc with our self-esteem. Shaming is one of the powerful tools used early in childhood to discipline and shape one's conscience and behavior.  Religion has always relied on shaming.  Another common social norm is winning is better than losing. In fact, to compete and win is drummed into us from the earliest team sports we are thrown into in elementary school.  I would posit that we don't even get to an idea of cooperation until several years later.  By that time, the message is set: beating your opponent is strength, and helping others is weak.  The third lesson taught through the subtleties of culture is that more is better.  Social norms strongly reward the "accumulators."  The one who has much is rich, and with wealth comes power and strength.  Each of these cultural influences subtly encourages hoarding, dominating, and even cheating to make up for any felt "weakness."  In turn, we see this powerfully reflected in the politics playing out, in the economy operating, and in our interactions with one another. 

To follow Jesus/"taking up our cross (our truest self)," likely means putting aside the pre-programmed social selfish ambitions. This is not denying the importance of ambition.  Healthy ambition is how human life broadens and expands.  Healthy ambition is the engine that moves the world in positive, life-affirming directions.  It is difficult, however, to find this part of ourselves if we've had parents, teachers, preachers, and coaches hammering the point that you only "make something of yourself" by getting ahead of all the competition. Most of us would accept the point that billionaires are probably at the top of the heap in this kind of societal game. But are they happier?  Is the world a better place?  Is the rest of the world happier as we all give up our own paltry worldly wealth that enables billionaires to hoard more of the money and resources (that do have a finite supply)?

In the First Nations Version (of the New Testament) this passage goes on, "The ones who hold on to their lives will lose them, but those who are willing to lay down their lives for me and my message will live.  How will it help you to get everything you want but lose what it means to be who Creator made you to be?  Is there anything in this world worth trading for that? (Luke 9:24-25)

These words are not meant to be taken in the literal sense. Rather, holding onto a life of shame, feeling like "a loser," or caving into the constrictions and external definitions of who we are by others will cause you to lose yourself and who God created you to be.  The ropes and chains holding us back from being our "true self" will diminish the full beauty of the created order as it was intended.  Love and happiness have a difficult time shining through the smudged-up glass of shame and hoarding. Imagine the difference we would witness in the world if love and helping hands were the rule and if striving (and finding) our intended purpose was the driving force in society.  It would transform politics and everything about how humans interact.  

A Christ-Follower's Reflections on Faith & U.S. Politics/Church

 U.S. History and Church history have always been my favorite subjects.  But in my almost 69 years I have never seen nor imagined that both entities would fall so radically out of whack.  Nor would I have thought it possible that basic institutions within each would be reverting backward in time to ages and battles already fought and supposedly settled.

 It is mid-March 2024 and the US presidential election is fast falling into full swing.  Except for the rubber stamping of respective political conventions, the main two candidates have been selected: Donald J. Trump for the Republican party and Joseph Biden for the Democratic party.  The differences between them couldn’t be starker.  One, the present incumbent President, is a near-life-long politician with extensive experience in Congress and the White House.  The other is a one-term President under multiple criminal and civil indictments with significant monetary fines already placed against him.  He continues making unproven claims of a rigged election four years ago.

The Church is in almost as much disarray. While there has been a wide spectrum from conservative to liberal churches for many decades, for the past decade or so, a polarizing spirit has taken hold. The soul representing the Church has become a cacophony of bickering voices, often with an angry, unforgiving pitch.  In addition, a large segment of disgruntled, angry, traumatized individuals have disaffiliated themselves from the Church and are openly hostile toward it. In all spheres, social media has mostly only magnified the intensity and list of grievances and wrongs.

This is going to be a set of treatises aimed at promoting daily faith reflection and, hopefully, providing an oar of hope with which to paddle one’s canoe through the roiling, oily, odorous swamp. We shall see.

Day One:

“Then the Pharisees came and began to argue with Jesus, asking for a sign from heaven to test him. Sighing deeply in his spirit, he said, “Why does this generation look for a sign?  I tell you the truth, no sign will be given to this generation.”  Mark 8:11-12

“Sighing deeply in his spirit…”  That captures it exactly. The challenges of dealing with the bubbling stew of competing “truths” and conspiracies/misinformation abound in a social pressure cooker that is pretty banged up and dented already from three long years of viral violence wrought by COVID-19, leaving most of us exhausted, stressed, on-edge, and weary.  Where can we find a sign or a signpost pointing us to relief from a sense of ever-building calamity?  Jesus’ response is not very helpful to us: “No sign will be given…”  But the sign they were looking for had already been given.  They just didn’t want to see it or couldn’t because their mindset blocked them from seeing.

The problem with mindsets, stereotypes, and crazy notions planted in our craniums is that, too frequently, they predispose what we see to a fantasy interpretation our brains paint.  It is like when a friend is speaking, and if they pause momentarily in mid-sentence, we jump in to finish their sentence for them, except that we get it completely wrong.

The Jewish hierarchy didn’t want to believe Jesus was the Messiah, and the works he was doing were so fantastic that “you’d be a dope to believe he was really doing that.” Jesus had signs all over the place, and they simply were never going to accept them because of their bias.

So, what biases and mindsets are predetermining what we see happening before our very eyes?  Perhaps just as important, can we use knowledge of Jesus and how our brains work to “pre-program” how we interpret what we see/hear?  What if we took Jesus’ signs and sayings as The Program?  How would we change our approach to the “news” or the vitriol/grievances flying left and right?

I’ll be laying out some possibilities and proposals in the coming days.

Questions:

What do you think about Jesus’ signs?

Who has had the most influence on your understanding and beliefs about Jesus?

Are you open to exploring other interpretations and understandings of faith? Why or why not?

Lent 2 - Sermon

 A sermon preached at St. Luke Episcopal Church, Renton, WA on 2/15/2024.  The gospel passage was Mark 7:1-15 -- disciples eating with unclean hands. 

Dominance and submission – two startling words to start a sermon you don’t hear every Sunday.  They are two fundamental powers present in all human interactions.  The interplay of give and take with these two powers appears any time two people or two groups begin relating.  The range of possibilities are endless.  When they are in an ideal balance back and forth, it’s like a couple skilled at dancing where they are beautifully in sync and stunningly flow across the floor.  But when the two powers aren’t in balance, it can be like my wife and me dancing – where we don’t even try dancing anymore because we have never resolved in almost 50 years who is leading. In all human relationships, there is this dance, so to speak, between who leads and who follows.  In every conversation, these powers are at play.  Who, for instance. has not been in a work setting conversation where “the boss” gives us instructions?  Or when you’re with friends – have you noticed if the conversation is flowing smoothly, it is because each participant takes their turn with about equal time talking and listening?  But what happens to the conversation if one person dominates the conversation?

Groups have these same dominance/submission power dynamics.  Let’s cut to the gospel lesson.  Judaism, at the approximate time the Gospel of Mark was written, had grown their Law from the 10 commandments in the days of Moses to just over 600 commandments covering every aspect of life… from what kettle you could cook vegetables in to who could sit where in the synagogue.  It was a way that the religion dominated their adherents’ lives.  As the adherent, you could be put out if you didn’t submit to the rules.  So, we see the Pharisees, who were basically the beat cops, calling out Jesus’ disciples for their slovenly eating behavior of not having washed their hands. They remind me of a kindergarten teacher scolding their students for not having sung the Alphabet Song slowly enough while washing their hands.

But Jesus jumps in to defend his disciples (shrewdly) by raising a question with the Pharisees about a law violation they themselves were committing.  He had noted that in their stumbling over themselves to prove their extraordinary piety and devotion, they were offering a lot of sacrifices or korban.  Sacrifices cost a lot of money.  So Jesus asks, in essence, with all you’re spending on sacrifices, what’s going to be left for you to take care of your aging parents – and if you can’t take care of them because you’ve given it all to sacrifices, how is that honoring your father and mother?  One of the key jujitsu moves to flip the position of who is dominating is to ask a question.  Here, Jesus asks the question about the Pharisee's incongruity in nit-pickiness.

It does seem to rock them back on their heels, and then Jesus, occupying a dominant position, teaches his followers, saying for the first time explicitly that the dietary laws (that occupied a large chunk of Jewish law) mean absolutely nothing.  What counts in his realm is what comes from a person’s heart.

I want everyone to be clear about the judo move Jesus pulled here on the Pharisees.  They’re in the dominant social position to issue fiats and orders and call people on the carpet for what they deem improper behavior.  And Jesus turns from a submissive adherent to the powers that be to a dominant place of teaching his faithful followers they can ignore the dietary laws in total. All by asking a simple question of the powers that called for an accounting of their own hypocrisy.

This is a skill we would all do well to have in our quiver for all of the times along the Good Way when we might run into the powerful, the bullies, the obtuse, the difficult, and the wrong-headed folks in the world. Have you ever had the experience of being confronted about a belief or behavior that we have then bowed to because their dominance/authority was strong enough that we lost our voice?   It happens to all of us, but I suspect that women and people of color find themselves in these difficult, lonely, silence-imposing tough spots with anyone claiming some kind of authority over us (real, assumed, or imagined.) There are many troublesome tales of rigid churches silencing women or demanding the right belief to be part of the community.  Or mansplainers at work who take your ideas and claim them as their own.  Or bosses who behave as if they own us and presume we will work whatever hours they throw at us.  In the church, there are many who don’t feel it appropriate or okay to ask questions about doctrine and theology or they get ignored and the message is clearly sent that questioning is not acceptable. Flipping it happens when we are brave enough to ask why those behaviors are okay.

I would call what Jesus demonstrates here: “Wild Spiriting.”  He didn’t need 600 laws to tell him what the right way was. As adults, if our hearts are grounded in God’s love, we really don’t need a bunch of rules or authorities telling us how to act, what to think, who to love or help, or how to behave. Love is a powerful guide.  Wild Spiriting uses the dominant spirit of love to call out love-stifling conventions, rules, and societal trends that are just wrong.  Wild Spiriting can guide and direct us in any relationship even those where we can sometimes find ourselves mute in the face of wrong.  Anytime something happens where we come away from it feeling less-than, guilty, or sorrowful about not having said/done something -- Wild Spiriting calls us home and reminds us to whom we belong. Wild Spiriting is where love, kindness, compassion, care, and certainty of God’s blessing upon us is the only license we need to step out of submission & confront the wrong or injustice we see or experience.

So Wild Spiriting and the Christian faith are powered by an alternating current of domination & submission.  It requires the submission phase of observing silence, study, and steady contemplation in prayer and listening to God with the flip into the dominance of getting one’s hands dirty – asking, working, leading, and challenging to broaden the Way/the Good Road/the Path for ever greater equality, compassion, and healing justice. 

Treading this path alone can be challenging.  The powers we face can be very intimidating.  But hopefully, here, in this church – I hope you can feel safe to use your voice to engage and ask questions.  To practice the jujitsu of flipping submission to domination and vice versa. To practice the fine arts of Wild Spiriting – where we encourage, name, report on successes, and get pulled up when all our responses to a sinful world have felt puny/weak. It is here where we’re reminded of our worthiness as God’s ambassadors and children. Never to oppress or flaunt, but to open dialogue, articulate clearly The Good Way, and, with our hearts leading, inspire the changes needed for a more perfect balanced world that can dance beautifully/gracefully across God’s majestic ballroom. 

Thoughts for Ash Wednesday 2024

 Ash Wednesday in mainline churches has historically been a liturgical day of repentance.  Many in non-Christian space or who have abandoned Christianity have expressed different issues with the Church and some, more specifically to do with penitence.  Without doubt criticism is not without merit, most especially in some of the ways it has gotten used to extract money in exchange for the forgiveness granted.  (As if the Church could have ever laid claim to granting what only God can give.)

I have a different take on repentance related to Ash Wednesday.  Most human beings have an internal sense of right and wrong that we call conscience.  Humans with emotional intelligence have the ability to experience guilt.  For most, guilt arises from one of three places: from within the self toward the self, from perceived wrongs done to or by other humans, and from perceived wrong done to/from the community or environment in which we live.  There is no need to be "Christian" to have experienced all three of these types of disjointedness with others. Sensitive souls would feel bad for having hurt another person, their community, or the planet.  A few super sensitive souls just walk around knowing they've hurt something or someone even if they can't name it. 

What the Christian tie-in is is the approach of how this "breach" is dealt with. Classic theology came up with a variety of ways to "restore" the wrong.  Many of these ways largely use a disconnected spiritual scapegoat (Jesus dying for our sins) rather than advocating any tangible "getting one's hands dirty" work to do.  But before we can get to restoring there is a first step of recognizing the wrong.  Ash Wednesday should be an annual date on the calendar when churches encourage folks to take an inventory of their conscience in a collective way.  Individual recollection of wrongs happen day by day or week by week but the collective meeting together, I propose, is the place for calling up the sin of the larger wholes -- the collective us that we do together-- the church, our city/county/nation/world.  

There are a huge array of collective sins that could be laid on the table, too many to name here.  I would argue that a large chunk of the animosity toward the Church is rooted in how the Church often has not taken the step to own the wrong, much less tried to address making amends to restore relationship. The Church, has not been particularly good at calling out the breaches and far too often has only sided with the oppression and harm-doing.  To make it worse, a large swath of Christianity is now taking up an anti-Jesus mantra to not feed, clothe, care for "the least of these." 

So, this year for Ash Wednesday may we take stock of the masses who are being wronged and reflect together on what tangibly can be done. And may we all keep before us a basic human guiding principle: "Do unto others as you would have done to you."