A Sign

Mark 13:1-8 (I Samuel 1:4-20)

November 18, 2012

            When I used to make the commute from my home south of Albany, New York to my church just north of Albany, I memorized all of the different landmarks and billboards and signs I would see along the way.  I knew the spot where I would have a chance to see wild turkeys.  I knew the moment a glimpse of the Hudson River would peek through the trees.  And I knew exactly when I would look up to my left and see the billboard from God.

            Yes, there was a billboard from God on my route from home to church.  I’ve discovered that these billboards were quite popular at that time, and according to my internet search this week they still exist in different places.  In case you’ve never seen one, the billboard is completely black with white lettering.  And the messages were clever.  One said, “That Love Thy Neighbor Thing … I Meant It.  God.”  Another read, “Don’t Make Me Come Down There. God.”  I believe the one that I took notice of everyday stated, “Use My Name in Vain One More Time and I’ll Make Rush Hour Longer.  God.” 

            I haven’t seen a God billboard in many years now, but I was thinking of them as I pondered our texts for this week, especially the Mark text which speaks of the signs of the temple’s destruction and the coming of God’s reign in to the world, and then I saw this billboard as I was driving through Oklahoma City the other day.  It was just a plain billboard with a star and some small lights, and it said, “Well, You Were Looking for a Sign.”  It was not signed by God, instead it was an ad for the billboard company.  But it got my attention.  And it seemed to fit with this whole idea of wanting a sign. 

            How often have I been struggling with some issue, some problem, some question, a difficult choice and I’ve looked to God for a sign?  More often than I can count.  How I wish that the signs I needed would come as neatly and easily as the billboards I read while I’m driving!  Unfortunately that’s not how it works, is it?  It would be so much less stressful if they did, and far easier to recognize them.  I could just read them as I drove along.  “Amy, You Know That Sign You’ve Been Looking For?  Here It Is.  God.”

            We all know that’s not how it works, but it doesn’t stop from us from seeking signs in one way or another.  The disciples wanted them as well.  In this very strange interlude in Mark’s text, Jesus and his disciples are leaving the temple.  A disciples points to the building and says, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings? “  Jesus responds that not one of those buildings will remain standing.  Those stones are all gonna come down.

            After these ominous words, Peter, James, John and Andrew talk to Jesus privately.  They want a sign.  When will these things happen?  When will all of this be accomplished?  Then Jesus warns them to not be lead astray by people coming in his name and claiming that they are the messiah.  The disciples will hear of wars and rumors of wars.  “Nation will rise up against nation.  There will be earthquakes.  There will be famines.  This is but the beginning of the birth pangs”   

            I guess these could all be taken as definitive signs, but here’s the big question.  Which round of false messiahs and wars and famines and earthquakes?  Which round of natural disasters and human calamities will signify the end times?  Because it would seem that if these are the signs, they’ve been appearing since the beginning.  If we take these as literal signs of the end times, then it’s not too hard to look around our world and predict that the end must be coming soon.  All of these signs are there, are they not?  So if these are the signs of God’s coming, then we should be as confused as the disciples probably were.  How do we know which earthquake is a sign of the end times?  How do we know which war signals the end?  Later on in this same chapter Jesus tells them that even the Son does not know the exact date and time of the end times.  That’s up to God and God alone.  The final message that he gives them is that they must remain awake. 

            But what are the signs?  The disciples wanted to know what to look for.  They wanted a definitive sign.  They wanted a billboard.  “Disciples, duck and cover.  This is it.  God.”  They wanted a billboard.  But that’s not how it works is it?  But we keep looking for signs.  There are predictions of the end times all the time.  Apocalyptic movies have been the rage since I was a kid and they continue to be made.  Of course the big thing that many people are looking toward is the end of the Mayan calendar.  Supposedly in just a few weeks, the Mayan calendar which has been counting down for thousands of years will come to an end, and there are many people who believe this signifies the end of the world.  One of the best responses I’ve seen to this lately has been going around all of the social media sites in the last weeks.  It says, “Keep Calm.  The Mayans were just counting down to the premier of the Hobbit Movie.”  Is the Mayan calendar a sign?  Is the Hobbit movie a sign?  We want a billboard, but the truth is, signs don’t normally come to us so concisely.  And a point that was made by New Testament scholar Karoline Lewis this week is that the word apocalypse does not have the same connotations in Greek that we have placed on it in English.  Apocalypse is not about some cataclysmic final destruction.  It is, instead, about revelation.  It is about God revealed.  Think about that for a moment.  The apocalypse is about God revealed.  It is the full and final revealing of God. 

            I realize that for some that brings to mind chaos and blood running in the streets.  But I have a hard time reconciling those popular images with the God who became incarnate in a frail human being.  It’s hard to imagine that vengeful smiting God as the same God who died on the cross.  I just can’t quite do it.  I suspect that the final and full revealing of God is more about love than it is about calamity.  I think that it’s more about us finally understanding how completely and utterly God is with us, for us – With Us – than it is about God wreaking havoc.  I think when it comes right down to it, that’s the real sign we all look for.  We want to know that God is with us. 

            I think that’s what Hannah needed to know.  Her story is one of my favorites in all of scripture.  She is barren, and even though her husband Elkinah loved her dearly and did not think less of her because of it, being barren was seen as a sign of God’s absence, God’s judgment.  As our text tells us it was believed that God had closed Hannah’s womb.  Even if her rival, Penninah, would not have taunted her for her childlessness, Hannah would still have felt the sting of being barren in a culture that equated a woman’s worth with her ability to bear children. 

            It was the time of year when Elkanah and all his household went to Shiloh to worship and sacrifice.  Hannah went to the temple to pray.  She made a promise to God.  She promised that if given a son that child would be dedicated to the Lord.  In her distress, in her anguish, Hannah wept and prayed fervently but silently.  Eli, the priest, watched her lips moving and thought she  was drunk.  When he chastised her for it, she explained to him her desperation, her heartbreak.  Eli tells her to go in peace and that God would answer her prayers.  That must have been the sign she was looking for.  She feels at peace.  She goes back to her family.  She eats with her husband.  And in due time she is due. 

            I think Hannah wanted a sign. She wanted a sign that God was with her; that God heard her.  She wanted a sign that she was not alone.  I think ultimately that’s the sign we all seek.  No matter what our prayers may be.  No matter what choices we face or decisions we must make.  No matter what our concerns.  I think we want to know that we are not alone.  I think we want God’s presence revealed to us in such a way that our doubts are overridden. 

            Perhaps what we truly want revealed to us is not dates or times or specifics, what we want revealed to us is that we are loved.  We are cared for.  We aren’t completely and utterly alone.  That’s the sign we seek. 

            Whether I’ve recognized it at the time or not, I have been shown that sign more times than I count.  I’ve seen the sign in phone calls, e-mails, cards.  I’ve seen that sign in the kindness of strangers.  I’ve seen that sign in the eyes of children, my own and others.  God’s love and presence in my life has been revealed to me not through large billboards but in small gestures and heartfelt expressions.

            The writer E. L. Doctorow said about his craft, “Writing is like driving at night in the fog.  You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”  It seems to me that this is a life of faith as well.  We don’t need signs that give us the exact details of everything that will happen, we just need signs that help us keep going, that help us keep hoping.  We don’t need a sign of what will happen at the end, we just need a sign that reminds us that no matter what, all will be well.  God will be there in the end, and even more importantly, God is with us now.  Take that next step and trust that there will be a sign.  Let all God’s children say, “Amen!”

Everything She Had

Mark 12:38-44

November 11, 2012

            “I just heard something pop!”

            Remember those words for a minute while I share this story. 

I’m sure my children would be amazed to discover that once upon a time I rappelled down the side of a cliff.  It’s true.  In my early college days, I went with some friends out to a rural area in Tennessee and we rappelled down a cliff.  Let me make it clear that the people I did this with were actually knowledgeable about such things.  We didn’t just decide to throw ourselves off the side of a rock for the heck of it.  They did this on a regular basis.  They had all the proper equipment, ropes, tools, etc. for rappelling.  A day of rappelling wasn’t a surprise either.  I went with the full knowledge that this was what we were going to do.  I had never tried anything like this, and I wanted to. 

            They decided to let the newbie – me—go first.  They harnessed me in all the necessary ropes.  One person was down at the bottom of the cliff holding the main rope, belaying me from below.  And my other friends were standing at the top with me as I prepared to make my descent. 

            If you aren’t sure what rappelling is, it’s fairly simple.  You walk backwards off whatever high place that you’re rappelling from, and you bounce your way down to the bottom.  Now the people who were helping me, who knew what they were doing, had strapped me into this rope harness pretty well.  There were two caribeeners that held the ropes in place.  Caribeeners are a particular kind of hook.  One of them had this extra safety fastener and one didn’t.  According to my friends, that was the way it was supposed to be. 

            So I’m trussed up like a turkey, and I begin this backwards walk to the cliff’s edge.  Let me say that this wasn’t a Mt. Everest kind of cliff.  It was not insanely high, but certainly high enough that you wouldn’t want to fall off.   Back to the backwards walk.  I’m walking backwards, one step at a time towards the edge, the movement of my feet contradicting the voice in my head screaming, “You’re walking backwards off a cliff!  Cease and desist!”

            I took my first step off into air and something on my harness popped.  I stopped walking.  I very calmly said, “I just heard something pop.”  When my support system of friends didn’t respond immediately I said it again, this time with a little more intensity. 

            “I.  Just.  Heard.  Something.  Pop!” 

            My friends jumped into action then and rushed to my aid.  They pulled me back out of the air and began looking for the source of the pop.  It turned out that what had popped was the first caribeener, the one without the extra safety lock feature.  They showed me what had happened and how all the ropes were still tied the way they were supposed to be.  All good.  All fine.  Was I ready to go again?  Believe it or not, I said yes. 

I retook that backwards walk.  I made that first step into nothingness, then my feet found the side of the cliff and I rappelled all the way down.  Midway I started to hotdog it, bouncing as high as I could because I was having so much fun.  My first words when I finally reached the ground were, “Can I go again?” 

            This was an incredible experience and one that I’ve never fully had the chance to replicate since.  But I remember this moment in my life, not because of the thrill or the adrenaline rush that came along with it.  I remember it because it was the first that I truly understood what it meant to be terrified – literally shaking, cold sweat terrified – to do something and yet I did it anyway.  I was scared before I took that first step.  I was petrified when I heard that pop.  I was so scared I felt a little faint from fear.  Stepping off that cliff a second time went against every impulse I had, but I did it.  Because I knew that the people who were guiding me through this were good.  They weren’t reckless or careless.  They were trustworthy.  I trusted them so I walked backwards off a cliff and had a great time in the process.

            I trusted them.  That’s the critical factor in this story.  I trusted them.  I was still terrified, but I trusted them.  That idea of trust seems to be a recurring theme when it comes to talking about faith.  I know it’s a recurring theme, or maybe the better term is issue, for me.  Do we trust?  Whom do we trust?  How much do we trust? 

            But what does trust have to do with our story?  The widow in this story in Mark’s gospel is most often lifted up as a paragon of generosity.  Just in describing her as a widow says something about her status in that society.  Without a husband’s protection, she would have been one of the voiceless ones, one of the least ones.  Her status stands in stark contrast to the scribes that we see in the first verses of this passage. 

We meet her when Jesus and the disciples are seated outside of the treasury, watching the crowd of people putting in their money.  Wealthy person after wealthy person went and put in large amounts, but this widow came and put in only two small copper coins.  But those coins were all that she had.  Jesus, on seeing her gift, tells the disciples, “This poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.  For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

I’ve read two different interpretations of this passage.  The first is the more traditional interpretation.  Jesus is commending this woman for her generous giving; her piety.  Even though she had the least to give, she ultimately gave the most, because she gave everything she had.  What she gave, the amount she gave, didn’t matter as much as the attitude in which she gave.  She gave generously of her first fruits, probably her only fruits, because she was giving to God.  This is the more traditional and widely-accepted version of this passage.

            But there is an alternative understanding as well.  Beginning with his teachings on the scribes in the earlier verses, Jesus is calling attention to a bankrupt and abusive religious system.

            The scribes have come to enjoy the honor and prestige that goes with their position.  In fact they enjoy the prestige and position a little too much.  It’s become more important than their religious calling.  In deference to their position, the scribes wore long linen robes with fringes, and they commanded the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets and parties.  The common people were expected to stand when the scribes passed them by on the streets.

            It’s important to note that the scribes did not take money for what they did.  There were no professional scribes, rabbis or priests at the time.  In fact, the scribes would probably be considered downright poor by their standards or ours.  They depended on the generosity of the common people to house them, feed them, etc.  When Jesus teaches that the scribes “devour widow’s houses,” the most recent interpreters feel that Jesus is actually commenting on the fact that the scribes and the religious system they represent prey on the people who can least afford it. When the widow puts her two coins into the treasury, she is unwittingly buying into this corrupt system.

            So which is it?  Which interpretation is the correct one?  It would be far easier just to ignore the latter and stick with the more familiar former, and in many ways, easier reading of this story.  But it seems to me that both interpretations have to be considered because I think that both are true.  We have to hold them in tension with one another, and we have to wrestle with that tension. 

            We may have officially observed our Stewardship Emphasis Sunday last week, but stewardship is ongoing.  Certainly it is not only about caring for what we have been given, but also being generous with what we have been given.  There aren’t too many better role models of this than the widow is there?  She is generous.  As I said earlier, even though what she gives is meager by comparison, it is her attitude of generosity that sets her apart.  And yet we cannot ignore the words that Jesus had for the scribes.  “They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers.” 

            Is this widow having her house devoured for a false religiosity?  Maybe.  And if so, what does it have to do with us?  Because that’s ultimately what we have to figure out from this passage.  What does it have to do with us?  Is it asking us to be generous; to adopt a spirit and attitude of generosity?  To give all that we can, even if what we can is small?  Or is it a warning to us in the institutional church to avoid preying on those who can least afford it?  Is it a warning to check our attitudes about our piety, to NOT be like the scribes who put on a good show, but their hearts aren’t in it?  Again, I think it’s both. 

            And what’s really hard about this passage is that it deals with that word we don’t like to deal with – money.  How do we deal with our money?  The church, this church, has to have money to stay open.  It takes money to run the heat and turn on the lights and operate the sound system.  It takes money to have the music and the preaching.  My internship supervisor was a gifted preacher and administrator, and he told me once that he dreaded the stewardship sermon he had to give every year because it felt like he was passing the hat.  But his livelihood depended on the giving of the church.  So does mine.  There’s not a professional clergy person out there who isn’t acutely aware of that fact.  So yes, when I call on us to be generous, I know that in some form or fashion that generosity supports my family. 

            One commentator summed up this passage in these terms.  It comes down to value.  What do we value?  The scribes valued prestige.  They valued personal honor.  They valued position.  The poor widow valued God.  I’m sure that duty and religious obligation were part and parcel of her giving, but in the end I think she valued God.  And she put her money, she put everything she had into what she valued. 

            That brings us back to where we started.  It takes trust to do what she did.  It takes trust to give wholeheartedly and unselfishly and generously to what we value.  She placed her value on God because she trusted God.  Placing every cent she had into that treasury took enormous trust in God.  She had to trust that she would be provided for, cared for, that she would be okay.  It took trust. 

            William Sloane Coffin once wrote that “faith is not believing in something that we cannot see; it’s trust without reservation.”  I think this widow had that kind of trust.  Do we? 

            Let us give all that we have, all that we are to the One who does not forsake or forget us.  Let all God’s children say, “Amen!”

Death No More

John 11:32-44

November 4, 2012

            My grandmother, or as I would sometimes call her in Swedish, my Mormor – which means mother’s mother – died three days after Phoebe was born.  My parents, following my dad’s hunch that this baby was on her way, rushed from Minnesota to Upstate New York and got to our house the day I went into labor.  Phoebe was born the next day.  Two days later we brought her home, made it through our first night, and the next morning the call came that Gramma was gone. 

            Within 45 minutes my parents had packed, loaded their van and were gone, heading back to Minnesota to help my uncle with final arrangements and the funeral.  In those moments as they were packing I remember sitting on the couch holding Phoebe, numb with shock, trying to process what was happening.  My thoughts were like a tape on a continuous loop circling and re-circling through my brain.  “I have a beautiful baby girl.  I’m a mommy.  Gramma is dead.  Mom and Dad are leaving.  I’m a mommy!” 

            Before they left, both of my parents held and kissed Phoebe, and they hugged and kissed me.  My dad told me that it was going to be all right.  I had a beautiful little daughter and I was going to be a good mom.  It would be okay.  But anyone who’s ever had a baby or lived with someone who’s just had a baby knows that your postnatal self is like one big hormonal pinball machine.  You’re happy.  You’re sad.  You’re elated.  You’re in the depths of despair.  All new parents are exhausted, but add in a measure of grief to this mix and you’ve got a roller coaster ride of crazy. 

            I was a mommy.  But I really wanted my mommy.  And my mommy wanted hers.  The one thing that helped get me through those first few days of learning how to care for my newborn daughter as well as grieve my grandmother, was when my mother called to tell me that that Gramma knew all about Phoebe.  Up until that phone call, it had haunted me to think that she had died and didn’t know that Phoebe had come into the world.  I think it was my sister-in-law who went and told her that Phoebe had been born.  Gramma was mentally sharp right until the minute she died, so she knew exactly what that meant.  Her 21^st great grandchild had come into the world.  She loved the name we’d chosen.  She was thrilled that we’d given Phoebe the middle name Hope because that is also my mother’s middle name.  She knew that Phoebe was well and that I was well, and then, as though she’d been given some sort of cosmic permission, she died, peacefully and quickly.  No suffering.  No lingering.  In fact one of the doctors who attended her hugged my dad afterward and told him that she’d died a good Swedish death.  Everything, every organ, every bodily system, just shut down at once. 

            Phoebe was born.  My grandmother died.  I understood then that the circle of life isn’t just a beloved Disney song.  It is real.  And as much as I missed and grieved my Mormor, I had this brand new little life in my arms that needed me.  So we went on. 

            But that time made me realize just how tenuous the line is between life and death.  We know intellectually that death is a part of life.  We recognize our mortality and the mortality of others.  It’s there.  It’s real.  But that knowledge doesn’t absolve us from grief, from loss, from the anguish that follows. 

            That’s where I think Mary and Martha are in this passage from John’s gospel.  Death would have been an even more intimate experience for them than for us.  There were no hospitals or life support machines.  Death, most often, would have occurred at home, in the midst of the family, in the midst of life.  Yet the grief and the loss and the sorrow were still there.  That anguish was as real for Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, as it was for me, for any of us. 

            Our passage today begins after Jesus has heard that Lazarus has died, after Martha meets him and tells him that his presence would have prevented Lazarus’ death.  Jesus gives Martha the words of assurance that death is not the final word, and Martha declares her belief.  Our part of the story begins with Mary.  Mary hears from Martha that Jesus, the teacher has come, and she goes quickly to meet him.  The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible translates many things well, but I think its language loses the force, the punch of what happens in this moment.  Where it says that Mary got up quickly, I think would be better translated as jumps up.  Mary hears Jesus has come, at last and apparently too late, and she jumps up.  She rushes out to meet him.  The NRSV states that she knelt at his feet.  But a more apt translation would be she threw herself at his feet.  This is no calm, collected greeting of a beloved teacher and friend.  This is a grieving, desperate, even angry woman who throws herself down in front of the one person she believed could have kept her brother from dying. 

            “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 

            In other words, where were you?  Why didn’t you get here faster, sooner?  Why didn’t you do something? 

            We read that Jesus’ response to Mary’s tears and the tears of all the people around her is that he was “greatly disturbed in spirit.”  But what does that mean?  Most often I have heard this interpreted as Jesus was moved by compassion and remorse and his own grief for Lazarus.  But one commentator sees this disturbance of spirit as Jesus being frustrated, disappointed and even angry.  The people who should have had some glimmer, some grasping of what and who Jesus is still don’t fully understand.  They still live by an old model of how the world works.  We live and we die and we’re done.  But the coming of Jesus has irrevocably changed that model.  Something new has happened.  Through him we have a different kind of life, a new life.  Death is no more.  Why can’t they see it?

            So Jesus asks, “Where have you laid him?”  Then Jesus weeps.  And his display of emotion brings up mixed feelings in all those around him.  “Look, he’s crying.  He really loved Lazarus.  Yeah, but if he could open up the eyes of the blind man, why couldn’t he keep Lazarus from dying?”

            Jesus goes with Martha and Mary and the others to the tomb where they’d laid Lazarus.  There was a stone in front of it, foreshadowing the stone that would block the entrance to Jesus’ own tomb, and he tells Martha to take away the stone.  She says, and I paraphrase, “Lord, Lazarus has been dead four days.  It stinks.” 

            Learning that Lazarus has been dead for four days wasn’t just to give the reader an indication of passing time.  In Jewish tradition, it was believed that a person’s soul or shade hovered above the body for the first three days after death.  After the third day the soul would make its way to Sheol.  Perhaps this was John’s way of making it clear, to borrow from a beloved musical, that Lazarus was really and most sincerely dead. 

            When Martha tells Jesus that her brother has been dead four days and it really stinks, Jesus tells her once again, as he did in the verses preceding this passage, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”

            When the stone is rolled away, Jesus prays.  And then he commands Lazarus to, “Come out!”  Then he does something wonderful, yet I think most of us miss it when we read this story.  Jesus raises Lazarus, but then he calls on the community to “Unbind him, let him go.” 

            Jesus gives new life to Lazarus.  But the community is called to share in that experience of new life. 

            On this day we participate in two important aspects of our life of faith.  Today we observe the tradition of All Saint’s Day.  We lift up in our worship the saints that have gone before us.  We remember our collective saints, men and women who have undergone persecution and torment, who have literally given their lives for the faith.  We number the women and men who have devoted themselves to lives of service and witness, who have shown through their words and their deeds the love of God to all people.  And we remember our personal saints, our grandmothers and grandfathers, our parents, our children, our friends, all of those people who in one way or another contributed to the depth and meaning of our lives. 

            Today we also recommit ourselves to stewardship, stewardship of our time and our resources and our gifts and talents.  We acknowledge that while Jesus creates the new life that is all around us, we are called to participate in that new life.  We are called to unbind one another from the cloths of death that are wrapped around us.  Not only do we celebrate the new thing that God is doing in our midst, we are called to be bearers of that new thing to others. 

            So how do these two aspects of our faith relate to one another?  What is the connection?  Believe me I’ve spent several weeks trying to figure this out.  And although I’m not really sure I’ll ever have a complete answer, I think that the connection lies somewhere in that line, that tenuous line between life and death.  In remembering our saints, we remember that life and death are never very far apart.  We remember that life is both precious and fleeting.  As stewards of God’s goodness, we also know that we are called to live fully in the time we have.  Life is both precious and fleeting so we need to make sure that as many people as possible know of God’s goodness and love and mercy.  Isn’t that the fundamental purpose of the Great Ends of the Church? 

            And both our saints and our stewardship remind us of our reason to hope.  The people who have gone before us had great hope that God in Christ would swallow up death.  Every tear of grief and sorrow would be wiped away.  Death would be no more. 

            Death will be no more.  That is why we remember our saints.  That is why we live and serve and give.  That is our hope.  That is our joy.  Death is no more!  In Christ we have new life.  In Christ we live, now and forevermore.  Let all God’s children say, “Amen!”