I Am Angry

            Other women have already written and spoken about Congressman Akin’s words far more eloquently than I.  But here’s the information I have found.

            According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), 1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime.  That means that 17.7 million American women have been victims of attempted or completed rape.  

            80% of sexual assault and rape victims are under the age of 30. 

            44 % of sexual assault and rape victims are under the age of 18.

            29% of sexual assault and rape victims are between the ages of 12 and 17.

            My daughter is 13 years old.  

Mr. Akin, Mr. King, and all those who support your stance on “legitimate rape”, could you honestly look me in the eye and tell me that if my 13 year old daughter were to be raped and conceive from that rape, that somehow it would be her fault or it wasn’t a real rape because her body is supposed to be able to “shut that whole thing down?”  

            I suspect – and I am horrified by this – that you could look me in the eye and make that claim.  

Mr. Akin, many people have called your remarks stupid and ignorant.  They are that indeed. But they are more than that.  They are malicious.  They are misogynistic.  They are evil.  They are not only offensive to women and the real men who love them, they devalue our humanity.  Your party claims that you value personhood when it comes to the debate over controversial hot topics such as abortion.  But you obviously don’t value the personhood of half of the population!  

            You devalue me, Mr. Akin.  You devalue my daughter.  You devalue the wonderful women I call family.  You devalue the amazing women I call friends.  You devalue powerful women around the world.  You devalue the women in your own life. 

So I will fight against you, and the others who support you.  I will fight your party.  I will fight you with my words. I will fight you with social media.  I will fight you by signing every petition I can get my hands on calling for your resignation.  I will fight you with my money.  I will fight you with my vote.  I will fight you by raising my daughter to use her voice against people like you.  I will fight you by raising my son to be the kind of man you seem incapable of being; one who really loves his neighbor as he does himself.

References

National Institute of Justice & Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.  Prevalence, Incidence and Consequences of Violence Against Women Survey. 1998.

U.S. Department of Justice.  2004 National Crime Victimization Survey.  2004.

RAINN Website

Seeking Wisdom

I Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14, Ephesians 5:5-20

August 19, 2012

            What do you think of when you hear the words “seeking wisdom" or "wise person"?  I think of Obie Wan Kenobie from Star Wars.  I also think of Yoda and Indiana Jones and Albus Dumbledore from Harry Potter and Mr. Miyagi from the original Karate Kid movie. 

            Besides the fact that this proves I have a shameless love of pop culture, I also think that these iconic figures – for indeed that’s what they are – have become archetypes of wisdom.  I’ll admit that when I was sitting in the cool, dark theater watching Star Wars unfold for the first time or seeing Indiana Jones with his fedora and whip that I didn’t grasp the concept that I was watching an archetype of wisdom.  Yet I’m convinced that’s what these figures have become.

            Let’s take Obie Wan Kenobie for example.  Young Luke Skywalker goes to him with a cryptic message he’s found in one of his uncle’s new droids.  This sets off a chain of events and Luke begins his training as a Jedi knight under Obie Wan’s tutelage.  Certainly this kind of training involves the use of the Jedi weapon, the light sabre, but even more than that Obie Wan tries to teach Luke that being a Jedi is not just about fighting.  It’s about recognizing the power of the Force within you and within the entire universe, then channeling that force to the cause of good.  Obie Wan also counsels Luke about the dark side of the force, because that too holds a power.  It led Luke’s own father astray.  The wise Jedi understands that the dark side of the force is equally as strong as the light side of the force, and makes choices that respects how quickly the dark side can take hold.

            Well, hopefully you know at least the outline of the Star Wars story so what I’m saying makes a modicum of sense to you.  But even if you don’t know the Star Wars story, there is a greater point being made here.  Obie Wan Kenobie didn’t just teach Luke Skywalker the various fighting stances a Jedi needs in battle, he passed on the deeper wisdom of the Jedi belief system.  Later on Yoda continues that lesson in wisdom, teaching Luke that the power of the force is not limited by physical size or strength, but only by the narrow scope of Luke’s imagination and trust. 

            Maybe it’s silly or nonsense, but when I think of seeking wisdom, I tend to get a picture in my head of a young hero or heroine who must be schooled in whatever knowledge he or she needs by someone who is the epitome of the wise elder teacher.  The teacher takes this young person under their wing, and not only helps the youth with the nuts and bolts required to deal with whatever trials lay before them, but they help them see the larger purpose, the greater meaning, the ultimate truth of their quest.  That is wisdom. 

            Wisdom is where we are today.  At the beginning of the service I quoted what is commonly known as the Serenity Prayer.  God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference.  This is a more contemporary version of the prayer that has been attributed to Reinhold Neibuhr.  12 step groups, particularly Alcoholics Anonymous as well as others, have made the saying of this prayer at the beginning of each meeting an integral part of those meetings.  That makes sense to me.  If you are struggling, day by day, to recover from addiction, you would want a prayer that speaks to what is and isn’t within your power.  And you would certainly want a prayer that speaks to wisdom.

            For many years I thought that the really tough part of this prayer was the serenity aspect.  I’m not a particularly serene person, nor do I calmly and coolly accept the challenges life throws at me.  I’m better than I used to be.  But historically that’s not been my initial reaction. 

            Yet as I get steadily older, I’ve come to realize that the really tricky part of the serenity prayer is that last line about wisdom.  Finding serenity to accept what I can’t change is becoming easier the older I get.  Finding courage to change what I can – well I’m working on that too.  But the wisdom?  That’s hard.  How do we know one from the other?  Where does our wisdom come from?  And furthermore what is wisdom to begin with?

            In the passage we read from I Kings, the Lord visits the newly ascended Solomon in a dream and asks Solomon what God should give him.  Solomon doesn’t ask for great wealth or a fleet of tricked out chariots.  Solomon asks instead for an “understanding mind to govern you people, able to discern between good and evil;”  Solomon recognizes that he is young and inexperienced and he is now the king of a numerous people, so he asks for wisdom.  I suspect it took a certain amount of wisdom to realize he needed wisdom.  The Lord grants him his request and more. 

            In our passage from Ephesians, the new rules for living continue.  It seems that all of them require a certain amount of wisdom to accomplish.  Let no deceive with you empty words.  Live as children of light.  Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.  Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.  Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise.

            Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise. 

            Once again, how do we do this?  How do we live as wise people?  Which begs the question I asked before, what is wisdom? 

            That’s a question I’ll probably spend the rest of my life trying to figure out the answer.  I know that it’s more than just having a wealth of knowledge or information.  Wisdom is more than our technology.  A quote that I read many years ago, I no longer remember who actually said it, is that as a people our wisdom has not yet caught up with our technology.  We can have a ton of info, but be lacking in wisdom.  Wisdom is having knowledge, sure, but wisdom also seems to come from experience.  It seems to be rooted in compassion, in empathy, in realizing that self-interest is not the only interest.  And wisdom seems to encompass a broad perspective on people, on life, on the universal hopes and fears that we share in common. 

            I wouldn’t claim to be wise, but I do know that whatever wisdom I have as a minister has come not only from what I learned in seminary, but in how I’ve learned to put into practice what I learned in seminary. 

            The coursework for a Masters of Divinity was only three years, but I earned mine in four.  In my third year I took on a year-long internship in a church.  In my first two years, I met a number of students who came back for their final year seeming very wise indeed.  In my eyes they were already ministers, they just didn’t have the official stamp of ordination yet.  So I was eager to embark on an internship year myself.  Perhaps I would also come back an unofficial minister. 

            I had a wonderful internship.  My supervisor, the head of staff, was not only a skilled minister, he also had an incredible gift for supervision.  He became a real mentor to me in my time there.  I’m convinced that the reason I came back and passed all my ordination exams in one shot, was because Greg was so good at helping me integrate theology and daily pastoral ministry. 

            But saying that my internship year was great does not mean that I didn’t make some colossal mistakes.  I had just enough knowledge in me to be completely dangerous.  One of my responsibilities as an intern was to work with the various youth groups.  A problem erupted in the Senior High youth group between one of the girls and a boy who was socially awkward.  I heard various complaints about some comments he’d made to her.  This young man had upset a lot of people by things he’d said and done, and I was told by several that I needed to do something.  So I decided this was the perfect opportunity to use all that I’d learned in my group processing classes.  I set up a special youth group meeting in which we were going to have open communication, and get to the source of all the tension and anger in the youth group.  From this we were going to form deeper bonds with one another and become even more Christ like in our community.  I laid out a whole plan of action, pulled out my communications Awareness Wheel, created some teaching handouts so we would all be on the same page as to how to share our feelings, and went into that meeting armed with knowledge.

            Should have gone off without a hitch, right?  Wrong!

            Never has a plan of mine backfired so spectacularly.  The meeting completely fell apart.  Girls left crying.  Boys were angry.  The girl in particular who’d been so upset by the socially awkward boy thought that she was being blamed for the problems in the group.  The socially awkward boy thought that everybody hated him.  And every single member of the group blamed me.  To use contemporary lingo, it was an epic fail.  To this day I still cringe at how badly I botched the whole thing.  I had tons of knowledge, great heaping portions of information, but absolutely no wisdom. 

            The good news is that I gained a little wisdom from failing that badly, not just in the failing but in the making it right.  I ate a lot of crow.  I not only saw how completely I’d messed up, I also had to admit it.  And apologize.  That’s probably the most valuable wisdom I’ve gained as a minister.  When you’re wrong, admit it and apologize.  By the end of my year, the group was back together.  We had an end of the year celebration and the kids who were once furious and threatened never to come back to church again were together, laughing and joking and enjoying themselves.  Grace prevailed.

            I think the true lesson in all of this is that the youth group was ultimately a community grounded in the love of Christ.  In spite of our failings, we left the door open to grace.  Those youth, young as they were, understood the importance of forgiveness and reconciliation.  So too, when Paul told the church in Ephesus to live as wise people, he said this to a community of people who also sought to follow Christ.  They were a community built on the foundation of Christ’s love.  And it is in Christ that we have our role model for wisdom.  I would never liken Jesus to Obie Wan Kenobie or Yoda – Jesus is more than just an archetype for wisdom – but in him we learn what it means to be fully human.  We learn that love and humility trumps the world’s perception of power and success.  We learn that the greatest wisdom comes not just from the information that we possess but in the compassion we show in using that information. 

            I’ll probably spend the rest of my life seeking wisdom, seeking to be wise, but I know that in those fleeting moments when I am able to emulate Jesus, and love as he loves, then I am one step closer to the wisdom I seek.  Let all God’s children say, “Amen.”

Tattoo You (Or Me)

                I am inked.  I got a tat.  I have a tattoo.

                You read me correctly, I have a tattoo.  This was not some youthful indiscretion.  I didn’t get my tattoo on a night of inebriation or because of a reckless dare from a college classmate.  I chose to get my tattoo a little over a year ago in the spring of 2011.  One Monday, as I was walking around downtown doing errands, I walked into Decorah, Iowa’s local tattoo parlor, and made an appointment for a little over a week later. 

                But impulsive as it sounds, this was not a rashly made decision.  I had fantasized, secretly and not so secretly, about getting a tattoo for years.  The first time I saw a tat up close was when my friend Melissa had one done in college.  There, just underneath her collar bone, was a flower in full bloom.  My first thought when she showed me what she’d had done, was, “That’s amazing!"  My second was, "I could never do that.” 

                And I didn’t.  For a long time.  But I wanted to.

 After discerning a call to seminary and ordained ministry, I thought that a tattoo just wouldn’t work with the image of MINISTER I believed I was supposed to present.  Yet when I was serving my first church in Rockville, Maryland, my Executive Presbyter and Associate Presbyter, both cool women and both around my age, went together and got tattoos.  My desire was once again piqued.  I just couldn’t bring myself to go through with it. 

               

                  I had lots of reasons. They were expensive and I was always broke.  Did I really want to do something so permanent to my body?  And even if I did, what the heck would I want to have indelibly inscribed on my person?  But I think the true reason, the deep abiding reason, was that I was afraid.  Not so much of the pain of having it done, but of what people would think.  Maybe people wouldn’t like me or accept me or listen to me if I had a tattoo?  Maybe I’d be rejected or abandoned or loved less? 

  

                Sure those real reasons sound silly, but how many of you spend more time than you’d like to admit worrying about the opinion of others?  How many of you are afraid that your lovability rests on external appearance?  I certainly did.  I still do.  I work very hard at not believing that.  But it’s a fear that still haunts me.  I’m changing that though.  Little by little. 

                Honestly, that was a big reason for getting my tattoo.  I decided to get it when I hit a certain number in my weight loss effort.  But I really got it to mark not just the physical changes I was making, but also the changes I was making from the inside out.  To me getting a tattoo was a tangible sign and seal of all I’d accomplished to that point, and all I hoped to accomplish in the future.  It also didn’t hurt that I let my rebellious streak come back out to play after many years of suppression. 

                My tattoo is a circle of two flowers and green vines, and in the middle is the astrological symbol for Libra’s scales.  It symbolizes my constant quest for finding both beauty and balance in the world and in my life.  And yes it is, as so many call it, in the “tramp stamp” position.  But as I am not a tramp, then it is not that particular kind of stamp.

                A few months ago I was on an airplane flying back to Oklahoma.  A group of women, obviously old friends returning from a girls’ weekend away, sat in the seats behind me and reviewed their latest adventure together.  One of them commented that with all the fun they’d had, at least they weren’t coming back with a tattoo.  Another said, loudly, “I guess tattoos are okay for some people, but why would I want anything that everybody else has?” 

                For just a second I cringed.  Was that what I had done?  Just followed a trend?  A fad?  Then I brushed it off.  To each their own, I thought.  But I know that, pop culture trend or not, getting a tattoo was one of many steps in me becoming more uniquely me. 

                I am inked.

Exercise to Exorcise

Demons

            When I was a kid I loved to run.  I didn’t run to be fast or win races, I just loved to move.  There was a joy in running, in moving.  I didn’t worry about being a great athlete.  I just moved. 

            Although when it came to athletics, I wasn’t a total slouch.  I’ve never been overly competitive when it comes to athletics, but I wasn’t terrible either.  When I was about 8, attending a YMCA day camp, a couple of the boys in my group challenged me to a race for fun.  I ran.  I won.  I’m a good swimmer, and I love being in the water more than anything else in the world.  I was one of a small handful of girls on an all-boys soccer team, when the sport was first beginning to make inroads in the United States.  And the reason I can still play some semblance of basketball today is because my older brother spent many hours with me on the court in our driveway, teaching me to shoot and dribble and do layups.  While I tend to suck at softball and baseball, I’m a fair tennis player, and when I’m in fighting shape, you do not want to take me on in badminton. 

            But athletics aside, when I was a kid I loved to run.  I loved to move.  For a brief while I had no self-consciousness about my body.  I loved it and I loved what it allowed me to do.  But somewhere along the line all that changed.  I think it was when recess turned into PE.  With the President’s Fitness Challenge (which is a great thing, don’t get me wrong) I suddenly had to prove my fitness, and was graded on that proof.  I no longer got to move just for the joy of moving.  I had to perform certain physical tasks, and failed if I couldn’t do them. 

            It didn’t help that puberty made an early appearance.  I suddenly had female attributes that I didn’t want and didn’t know how to deal with.  The problem with puberty and me was that I didn’t suddenly get curves, I just got round.  And I was self-conscious and my self-esteem plummeted.  I no longer ran because I liked it.  I ran because I had to.  I was slow and chubby and generally began to despise everything that had to do with gym in particular and exercise in general. 

             What happens to the kids who are slow and chubby and can’t do a pull-up no matter how hard they try?  They get teased.  They get mocked.  They become the last ones picked for teams.  Whatever self-esteem they had left is completely wiped out.  You can probably guess I was one of those kids who got picked on for not being good enough when it came to sports. 

            This isn’t a whine about the past though.  Because now it is many years later and I’m in better shape than I have been in years.  I work out hard.  I kickbox.  I do Zumba.  I work out on the elliptical machine and the rowing machine.  I swim laps and take water aerobics classes.  I do whatever I can to keep in shape, keep my weight down and fend off depression by raising my endorphins on a regular basis.  Last week I started taking a boot camp fitness class at my Y two mornings a week. 

            The first two days were tough.  I was sore for days.  The second day we did a lot of running/jogging, which I thought would kill me.  But in the last sprint of the morning, jogging back to the main building of the Y, I felt like I did when I was a kid.  It was a joy to move!  I was completely in tune with my body.  I wasn’t self-conscious about how I looked running.  I just loved how it felt to run.  Feeling this way, in spite of the predicted muscle soreness, I couldn’t wait to go back this morning.

            Let me say that our boot camp instructor is great.  She’s encouraging.  She doesn’t demean.  She tells us that we’re all at different fitness levels and not to compare ourselves to anyone else in the class.  But she also likes to shake things up and try different things every day.  It’s a strategy that keeps us on our toes and keeps our muscles responding and working hard.  Today she decided to put us in teams.  Each team would do one exercise, and each member would race to the center of the gym, do another exercise, race back, then the next member of the team could take his or her turn.  It was meant as a friendly competition.  The only prize earned was the team that came in first each time got to run two less sprints than the team that came in second.  Everybody jumped right in eagerly.  Except me.  I felt tears begin to well up in my eyes.  Suddenly I was back in PE.  I was the slowest one.  I couldn’t do the exercises as well as everybody else.  The only sprinting I wanted to do was to my car and home. 

            I stuck with it, but I was miserable.  It’s hard to explain why.  No one mocked me.  My teammates were encouraging, but I realized that this morning’s work out unleashed demons I thought were long gone.  Sadly they’ve been battering me ever since.  Their voices tell me that I’m not enough; not good enough, not strong enough, not capable enough.  They try to make me believe that my self-esteem should be intricately connected with my physical self – my looks, my weight, my coordination or lack thereof.  Who knew that my desire to exercise would also bring about a need to exorcise? 

            But exorcise I will.  I will find a way to silence their voices, root them out of my psyche and send them packing.  Mahatma Gandhi once wrote, “Strength does not come from physical capacity.  It comes from an indomitable will.”  If this has truth to it, and I think it does, then I am stronger than my demons.  I still can’t do a good pull up, but my will is stronger than ever.  I am more than just the sum of my physical attributes.  The demons won’t win. 

By the way, I’m going back to boot camp on Thursday. 

New Rules

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

August 12, 2012

            The philosopher and ethicist, Thomas Hobbes, did not base his understanding of ethics on a belief in the divine.  He believed that there were Laws of Nature that could be reasoned out without any divine intervention or interpretation necessary.  He also believed that because humans are essentially social animals, meaning that we need social groups and communities in order to survive and thrive, then having clear Laws of Nature was absolutely essential to our survival.  In his words, without these laws that allow us to live together in relative harmony, our lives will be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

            Hold onto that thought as you listen to this story. 

            My cousin Rich was the closest thing I had to a little brother.  That included sibling rivalry.  Rich and I missed each other terribly in the time that we were apart, and we fought like cats and dogs whenever we were together. 

            Rich went through an intense toy gun phase.  He loved to play with guns, collect as many of them as he could and stage battles on a regular basis.  So whenever Rich and I got together, we ended up playing with guns, whether I wanted to or not.  On one trip to Minnesota to visit Rich and his family, when I was around 9 or 10, Rich convinced me to play some war game with him.  We were heading down through the woods in his backyard, guns in hand, when I decided I’d had enough.  I didn’t want to play guns.  I didn’t want to engage in a battle.  I just wanted to go back to the house and read my book.  So I told Rich that I wasn’t feeling well and I was going back. 

            Rich wasn’t happy about this.  His toy gun was a heavy wooden play rifle, and when I made my pronouncement, he yelled, “Chicken!” and threw the gun at me.  It hit me right in the back of the neck.  So I turned around and clocked him.  Yep, that’s right, I punched him. 

            It seemed that time stood still in that moment.  We both stood there a little shocked and bewildered at what had just happened.  Then in the same instant we took off running toward the house, determined to be the first one there so we could tell our side of the story before the other one got the chance.

            The result was that we were immediately separated, sent to our different corners and reprimanded for breaking the rules of appropriate behavior.  You don’t hit someone.  Not with a gun.  Not with your fist.  You don’t.  And our punishment was to cool off, then apologize. 

            Rich and I spent a large chunk of our time together as children having to cool off and apologize.  There are many pictures of the two of us hugging, but if you look closely you’ll see a pair of hands on each of our backs, pushing us together.  But that’s the way it was.  That’s how our parents kept some semblance of order.  Rich and I fought, we were reprimanded, we apologized.  You broke one rule and there was always another rule waiting to help patch things up. 

            Fortunately both Rich and I haven’t held any grudges from our childhood skirmishes.  While we may have fought horrifically as kids, we’re good friends now.  The anger we would feel towards one another dissipated quickly (usually through a brief bout of violence, which I can't condone) and didn’t leave room for grudges. 

            But that’s not always the case.  Paul, in this section of his letter to the Ephesians, writes in verse 26 “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.”  Paul seemed to understand that anger had its place.  I would bet that every reform movement in human history started because of anger.  A person or a group of people grew angry over ill treatment or injustice and began to protest.  We are called Protestants because our spiritual ancestors protested and called for reforms in the church.  I suspect some anger had to have been involved. 

            Be angry, but don’t let the sun go down on your anger.  Meaning, I think, express your anger, and then get over it.  Don’t leave room for grudges to set in.  Because when we hold a grudge against someone, it festers.  We seek revenge and we work against one another, and none of this builds up the community.

            It seems to me that that’s Paul’s real concern – building up the community rather than tearing it down.  What builds up?  What doesn’t?  How can you be angry, express that anger and not do damage to the community?  How can you deal honestly and uprightly with one another?  How can you build up the community?

            Well you need rules.  And this passage in Ephesians lists some of those rules.  We speak the truth to our neighbors.  We get angry, but we don’t sin in our anger – which means we can’t solve disputes the way my cousin Rich and I did, by throwing a punch.  But we also can’t let that anger go on and on and on. 

            If members of the community steal, then they need to stop stealing and work honestly.  What they make should be shared with the needy.  We can’t let evil, slanderous, gossiping talk leave our mouths, because again that doesn’t build up.  It only tears down and destroys.  We need to put away bitterness and slander and wrangling and malice.  We must be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving of one another as we have been forgiven. 

            These are the rules.  And as my sermon title suggests, they were, are, new rules.  I took my title from the passage heading in my Bible – Rules for the New Life. 

            But these really aren’t new rules are they?  We could survey a wide variety of ancient sources and probably find rules for living in social groups that read almost exactly like Paul’s.  These other groups would have nothing to do with the early church or the community of believers as Paul knew them.  As I said at the beginning of my sermon, Thomas Hobbes did not work from a Christian or religious perspective.  But he reasoned that natural laws could be found and were there for a purpose, to keep us from killing one another, to keep our lives from being solitary, nasty, brutish and short. 

            So these aren’t really new rules?  But for Paul they are, not because the rules for living in community have significantly changed, but because what the community is grounded in has.  The motivation for community has changed.  It is new.  For Paul the significance of these communities is that they are formed out of our being baptized into Christ.  It is our baptism that makes these rules new.  Through our baptisms we have been engrafted into Christ.  We have become part of him, part of his death, part of his new life. 

            That’s what makes these rules new.  They are grounded not just in a social contract to keep people in a community from beating each other to death, but in the body of Christ.  So if we tear each other down, we tear Christ down.  In Paul’s words, we “grieve the Holy Spirit.”  I guess one way to say it, is that we not only hurt one another when we break these rules, we hurt God.  I realize that sounds overly simplistic, like something my Sunday school teachers would have said to me when I was little.  “If you hurt your friend, you hurt Jesus.”  But if our relationship with one another is built on the relationship that God in Christ made with us, then it stands to reason that if we hurt one another we hurt our relationship with God in the process. 

            At the close of this part of the passage, Paul states that the ultimate rule is to be imitators of God.  We are beloved children of God, therefore we should live in love as Christ loved us.  Perhaps to the casual observer this sounds easy, but living it out is anything but easy.  In fact being told to imitate God is just about the most intimidating command I could hear.  To me imitating God is a perfect way to set myself up for failure, because there’s no way I can possibly live up to that kind of standard. 

            But I don’t think Paul is trying to set us up for defeat.  Perhaps Paul wants us to consider that God loves us unconditionally, so we need to do our best to love one another the same way.  God loves us persistently, so we need to persist in loving each other no matter how hard it is.  God loves us, not because we are so completely loveable, but because more often than not we are completely unlovable, yet God loves us anyway.  God forgives us, so we need to figure out how to forgive one another.  God speaks hard truths to us, but even in those hard truths, we are loved, we are the beneficiaries of God’s infinite kindness, so let us speak the truth but let us be kind to one another even as we’re doing it.  These are the new rules for us, the body of Christ.  Let all God’s children say, “Amen.”

           

           

Hard Truths

II Samuel 11:26-12:13a (Ephesians 4:1-16)

August 5, 2012

            If there is one person in my family who isn’t afraid of speaking a difficult truth to me, it’s my dad.  He’s done it many times; sat me down, told me that he thinks I’m about to make a mistake or that I’m about to make a choice that’s unwise. 

            One time I remember in particular is when I was preparing to graduate from college.  Along with resume writing and job searches, I was also dating a young man who was – how can I put this nicely? – a jerk.   But I couldn’t see it.  And friends and family were concerned about me getting serious about him.  In fact we were getting fairly serious.  So my dad finally sat me down and had a talk.

            My dad is a pretty quiet man.  He listens intensely to what is being said around him and does a lot of thinking about it before he speaks.  He’s not afraid to make tough decisions or speak his opinion.  But you know that when his opinion is offered, it’s going to be one that’s based on careful thought.  He doesn’t often speak rashly or impulsively. 

            So when he decided to talk to me about my relationship, even though I didn’t want to hear it, I listened.  I hated the hard truths my dad was speaking, especially because they concerned me, but I knew that he was speaking from a thoughtful place – and, even more importantly, a loving place.  He spoke some hard truths, but they were truths I needed to hear.  I listened.  And thankfully I slowed the relationship down and eventually broke it off entirely.

            This week, as we continue the story of David’s abuse of power with Bathsheba and his manipulation of Uriah which led to the young soldier’s death, we hear hard truths.  Nathan has come to confront David about what’s happened but he does it in a way that will ensure David fully understands the consequences of his actions.  He tells David a story.

            “There were two men; one rich and one poor.  The rich man had many flocks and herds, but the poor man had only one little lamb.  The poor man raised the lamb like a child.  It grew up with the man’s own children.  It shared from his table.  It was a member of the family.  It was like a daughter to the man.”

            “But one day the rich man had a visitor, a traveler who came to stay with him.  The rich man wanted to serve his guest a fancy meal, but he hated to take an animal from his own flock.  Instead, he took the poor man’s lamb and served it as the main course.”

            David became incensed at this terrible tale.  He was livid.  He said to Nathan, “This man deserves to die!  He should have to replace the man’s lamb four times over because of what he did, and because he had no pity.”

            Then in one powerful instant, Nathan turns the story on David, and cries out, “You are the man!”

            If I could turn this into a movie, I would have the actor playing Nathan standing with his back to David as David spouts off about the punishment this man deserves.  Then Nathan would whirl around to face David, pointing his finger at David’s nose and shout, “You are the man!”

            You are the man!

            These words must have felt like a razor-sharp punch right in David’s stomach, knocking the wind of righteous indignation out of him.

            You are the man!

            This isn’t some sad little story about some unknown guy out there somewhere.  This is about you, David; you, and what you’ve done to Uriah, to Bathsheba. 

            Nathan then proceeds to tell David what the Lord has to say about the whole ordeal that David’s lust and abuse started.

            “David!  I anointed you king over Israel.  I rescued you from the hands of Saul.  I gave you this house, your wives.  I gave you the house of Israel and Judah.  And if all this would have been too little, I would have given you even more.  But what you have done is evil in my sight.  You have despised my word.  You have killed Uriah the Hittite, and you’ve taken his wife to be your own.”

            “Because of all this, there’s going to be trouble for you; trouble in your household.  You took Uriah by the sword.  Well that sword will never leave your house from this moment on.  In other words, David, you will reap what you have sown.”

            David immediately recognized his deeds for what they were – sin – and he repented.  But the Lord’s words proved true.  In very short order, trouble raised its head in David’s household through his older sons – Amnon and Absalom.

            What really stands out to me about this story is not so much the content of the truths spoken to David, although certainly it was truth and it offers significant and important insight into the dynamics of David’s family and his kingship.  But more than that, what strikes me is the power that speaking this hard truth has to effect change.  David hears the word of truth, righteous truth, God’s truth, spoken to him through Nathan and he sees how far he has turned from God and repents.

            Speaking a word of truth to someone is never easy.  It’s difficult at best.  It can be grueling, painful, and leave both speaker and listener feeling vulnerable.  It had to have been hard for Nathan, and yes, even God, to speak this word of truth to David.  David was a beloved son, but he had to be told the truth about his actions and see that their consequences would be severe and far reaching.

            David had to be told a necessary, but hard truth.  But that truth was not spoken to utterly destroy him.  It wasn’t done just to lay him flat, to hurt him without any redemption.  I believe that this powerful word of truth was spoken so that David could see clearly what he had done, so that he could see the pain he caused and hopefully become a better king, father, husband and person because of it.  It seems to me that the truth was spoken to David because it had to be, but it also gave him the opportunity to learn and change.

            The Lord through Nathan spoke a word of truth to David in love.  It may not have sounded very loving, but it was.  That’s what Paul writes about in these verses in his letter to the Ephesians.  “Speak the truth in love.”  These words come at the end of Paul’s passage about maintaining the unity of the church, the body of Christ.  We are all members of one body.  We all have our own unique and useful gifts and talents that help the body to function.  We have all been called, in one way or another, to serve God and to build up the body of Christ.  And we can’t be like little kids anymore.  We can’t be naïve.  We can’t be blown off course by trickery or fancy words that deceive.  “But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”

            As I understand it, what Paul is really trying to teach the Ephesians is how to be in right relationship with one another.  Unity is found when people live in this right relationship.  Unity requires that people recognize and affirm the calling of each member, and it requires that people use their own gifts and talents for the good of all, for the good of that common relationship.  Perhaps even more than that, unity requires that when we are blown off course, when we are falling away from that relationship, the truth must be spoken to us in love.

            I guess the problem with this is that too often we speak the truth to one another, but it’s not spoken in love.  When my father spoke a hard truth to me, it was spoken in love, but there have been lots of other people who have spoken hard truths over the years as a way to lay me low.  I’ve had the truth spoken to tear me down, not build me up.  I know that I’m guilty of this as well.  I’ve spoken a truth to someone to hurt rather than to help. 

            The problem though is that when we tear down one another, we also tear down the body of Christ.  Speaking the truth in love is meant to be just that.  It’s meant to build up, not tear down, to grow, not destroy.  Yet we’re not always good at putting this speaking truth in love concept into practice.

            In one of the presbyteries that I served, there was a larger contingent of ministers and elders of one political and social persuasion than another.  Whenever there was a debate on a particularly controversial subject, commissioners on both sides of the line would queue up to take their turn at the mic and speak their particular truth.  Often, though, there would be far more from the majority opinion waiting to speak.  What disturbed me about this was not that the people on the majority side wanted to have their turn, it’s that they used their chance at the mic to just verbally beat the other side to death.  We’re going to use our truths, not as a way to build up, but to tear down, stomp on and utterly crush the other side.  It was discouraging, to say the least.

            But the presbytery I went to next had a different policy.  After witnessing how divisive and destructive these debates could be to the whole presbytery body, the Executive Presbyter determined that whenever a particularly controversial subject was to be debated on the floor of presbytery, always, ALWAYS, the agenda would be structured so that worship immediately followed the debate and communion was always celebrated during that worship. 

            This EP understood that no matter how angry or frustrated the commissioners might be over a hot topic, if we could worship with one another, if we could see each other through the lens of the Communion Table, we could find a way to overcome what divides us.  When we broke bread and shared the cup, we were better equipped to build up rather than tear down. 

            The hard truths were still spoken in that presbytery, but they were spoken in love.  That made all the difference.  At some point or another, we will either have to speak a hard truth or hear one.  But may we remember that whether we are hearing or speaking, that truth should be spoken in love.  It should be spoken to build up, to create, to liberate and to witness to the love of God for each of us.  Let us speak the truth in love to one another and to our hurting and broken world, so that God’s love can be felt in all places by all people.  Let all God’s children say, “Amen.”