Remembering

Luke 3:7-18

December 16, 2012

            “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

            I’ve seen these words from Matthew’s gospel repeated over and over again in the last 48 hours.  They provide one way for people who have been directly and indirectly affected by the tragic events that happened this past Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut to express their grief and heartache.  I’m using them because I also need to find a way to express that grief and heartache.  I think we all do.  We have all been affected by what’s happened.  Every single one of us. 

            I will be honest with you.  I’d rather be anywhere than here right now.  I’d rather be home in bed reading the paper or sitting in a restaurant drinking one more cup of coffee.  This desire is not fed by my need to be lazy or take a day off.  It’s not because I don’t see church as the appropriate place to be in the aftermath of something so monstrous.  I feel that way, because too many times I, along with my colleagues and other clergy around the nation, indeed around the world, have had to stand in our pulpits and try to make sense out of senselessness.  We’ve had to find some comprehension in what is incomprehensible.  And we’ve had to give voice to the unspeakable.  I know that this is both the somber and sacred task of pastoral leadership, but doing this even just one time is too much.  Yet here we are again.  Evil and violence has struck, and we are at a loss to understand.

            Bruce Reyes Chow, former moderator of our denomination, stated that if he were preaching today he would try to walk the fine line between what we want to hear and what we need to hear.  What we want to hear are words of comfort.  But the problem I find is that when we stare in the face of such tremendous evil, I just don’t have those comforting words.  None of us do.  What words can describe the shock and the horror and the heartache that we feel when we hear about little ones, first graders, and their teachers and administrators being gunned down?  There are no words.  I don’t have words.  To try and offer false comfort seems a terrible disservice to those who have died. 

            When I have preached on Luke’s John the Baptizer in the past I have tried to paint a picture of a wild man, of someone who was outside of the norm with a message so shocking that we can’t help but stop and think seriously about what he was trying to impart.  In some ways John seemed not quite sane.  But right now John the Baptizer with his bizarre dress and peculiar diet seems the sanest among us.  I do know this, for the people in Newtown, Connecticut it really won’t matter if the world grinds to a halt on December 21^st as it has been predicted.  For them, the world as they knew it ended this past Friday. The darkness, it seems, has overcome the light. 

             But as people of faith, even when that faith is faltering or doubting, we take seriously our belief that eventually the light will pierce the darkness; that in the final run the darkness will not overcome, the darkness will not win.  We take seriously our hope in the power of God, the goodness and mercy of God, and our belief that the gospel is actually good news.  I know I said this just recently in a sermon, but it must be said again.  Our faith means that we also acknowledge that hope and optimism are not the same.  They are not synonyms.  Optimism is the belief that everything will be fine and dandy.  Hope is the recognition that life can deal us terrible blows.  Sorrow and suffering are real.  But hope is the belief that sorrow and suffering is not all there is.  Hope is the belief that not only is God with us in our suffering God will bring us through it to something more.  Hope is our trust that eventually light will pierce the darkness.

            But for now we wait in the darkness.  We wait and we grieve with those who grieve.  We mourn with those who mourn.  Isn’t it in times like this, when the unimaginable has become reality, that we realize our common ground as humans?  One of my favorite quotes is from Mother Theresa who said that, “we will never know peace until we remember that we belong to one another.”  I’ve heard the essence of her words expressed time and time again in the hours following the shooting.  Author and poet, Maya Angelou, expressed that these children were our children and the adults were members of our family.  Our president spoke eloquently of this loss of our children, our beautiful children who should not have suffered this fate.

            I know that we cannot possible begin to feel the depth of pain and sorrow that those parents in Connecticut are feeling and will continue to feel.  I know that the families of the principal and the school counselor and the teachers and staff and the shooter’s mother are grieving more deeply than I can truly grasp.  But I think, more than ever before, that what makes us most fully human is our empathy.  So we are grieving, all of us.  The difference as I see it in losing a loved one who dies at the end of a long, well lived life and a child or a young person, is that we not only mourn the death of that young person, we also mourn the future.  We mourn what could have been, we mourn what should have been.  We mourn the loss of potential and the fulfillment of dreams.  We mourn because whenever our children are taken from us the future is dimmer.  And the future is indeed dimmer this day.

            We mourn today because if we take seriously the idea that we are the body of Christ made visible to the world, if we take seriously that the world is populated with God’s children, then this terrible evil reminds us of how starkly we are broken.  When one of us is broken, we all are.  This is not my attempt to answer the question, “why.”  I don’t have any answers.  I don’t think we ever will.  I cannot claim the belief that somehow God made this happen so something better will come out of it.  I think that when something like this happens it is exactly the opposite of what God wants.  So I don’t know why.  None of us do and we will have to live into that not knowing.  But even as I say that I also profess that God is present, God is in the midst of it all. 

            So what happens now?  Where do we, as a people, go from here, from this moment?  John told the people who gathered around him that the fruits of repentance they needed to bear would be seen in their sharing, giving.  If you have two coats give one to someone with none.  If you have more food, give some to someone who doesn’t.  He told the tax collectors not to take more money than they were supposed to. He told the soldiers to not use their power or their position to extort money or threaten and oppress those who have no choice but to do their will. 

            In other words remember that these people belong to you and you to them.  Remember.  For me remember is the critical word we should take with us today.  Remember.  Not only should we remember what happened in Connecticut.  We should.  We should remember the names of those who died.  We should remember this horror so hopefully we can prevent it from happening again.  But even more than that we must, we must remember that we belong to one another.  Those babies who were mowed down on Friday were our children.  And the children who face violence every day in inner city schools are our children.  The children we tutor at Horace Mann are our children.  The children who fall through the cracks of our educational system, those are our children.  The children throughout the continent of Africa who are orphaned due to AIDS or war or neglect are our children.  We belong to one another.  Remember.

            We have to remember that we belong to one another.  The hard working father and the gang member; we belong to them and they to us.  The first responders who rush in and, yes, even the one who does the shooting; we belong to them and they to us.  And we have to remember. We have to remember.  Right now it’s easy to do that.  Right now it’s simple to remember.  But it can’t just be in the wake of a tragedy that our memory for what binds us together gets reignited.  It has to be always.  Every day.  We have to remember passionately and with great commitment that as God’s children, we belong to one another.  And as we remember we must act accordingly.  We must love accordingly.  We must love fiercely and that love must be reflected in our deeds here and throughout the world.  What other choice do we have?  We belong to one another.  So remember and let us pray…

God,

                        Your love cares for us in life and watches over us in death.  We bless you for our Savior’s joy in little children and for the assurance that of such is the kingdom of heaven.  In our sorrow, make us strong to commit ourselves, and those we love, to your unfailing care.  In our perplexity, help us to trust where we cannot understand.  In our loneliness may we remember those who have died, trusting them to your keeping until the eternal morning breaks; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

                        (Book of Common Worship, 1993 Westminster/John Knox Press)

Refining

Malachi 3:1-4

Luke 3:1-6

December 9, 2012/Second Sunday of Advent

            A few years ago I had to have some surgery done on my foot.  It was this time of year, and I had been running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to complete every Christmas task on my list before the holidays before the surgery, because I knew once that was done, I would be off my feet for several days. 

The morning of the surgery my father came over to take the kids to school.  It was a little before seven and when he walked in the door I was vacuuming.  Surgery or not, I just couldn’t leave the house without vacuuming.  Some of that was motivated by my nerves, but mainly it was because I wanted everything as neat as it could be before this happened.  I wanted to be prepared.

            You see, I have an inner neat freak.  It doesn’t always show up in my office or my house, because my life gets so chaotic that I can’t keep up with everything.  But it’s there.  And it pops out at odd moments – like when I’m getting ready to go in for surgery.  What’s really sad is that morning as they moved me into the operating room and had me move from my rolling bed onto the operating table, I reached over and straightened the rumpled sheet on the bed I’d just left. 

            You can probably guess then why this passage from Malachi appealed to me so much.  Any passage that has to do with soap sounds good to me.  But this isn’t a passage that I read very often, so I wasn’t familiar with Fuller’s soap.  It took some research to understand what these verses are referring to.

            First of all fulling was the act of cleaning and preparing wool for use.  A fuller was the person who did the fulling.  According to one source that I read, in the Old Testament there was a place outside of Jerusalem called Fuller’s field. It stands to reason, then, that this must have been the place where the wool went to be fulled.  The fuller’s soap was the soap used by the fuller to clean the wool.  It had to have been some pretty powerful soap.  The wool sheared from a sheep would have been greasy and dirty.  The soap used, along with a generous amount of hard scrubbing, would need to be able to remove the grease and grime that collected on the wool.  Fuller’s soap would make the wool snow white.  Fuller’s soap softened and relaxed the wool, so that it would be ready for whatever purpose it was put to.  Whether it would be made into clothing, bedding or rugs, the Fuller’s soap prepared the wool.  It made it ready.

            So the messenger that Malachi refers to is someone who will act on the people like Fuller’s soap acts on wool.  Because of this messenger the people will be made ready.  They will be prepared.  They will be washed clean. 

            “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.  The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight – indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.”

            Christian tradition ties this messenger that Malachi speaks of to John the Baptist.  We also read about him today in the gospel of Luke.  It seems that the lectionary has us working backwards from the end to the beginning.  Last week we read about the end times and the signs that accompany them.  Next week we hear of John’s birth.  But Luke 3:1-6, our verses today, begins the story of the adult John the Baptist.  Luke is the only gospel where we hear about the birth of John.  In Luke’s telling he is the son of Elizabeth and Zechariah.  Elizabeth and Mary, the mother of Jesus, are cousins.  This makes John and Jesus cousins as well.  Now the word of the Lord has come to the grown up John in the wilderness, and he’s preaching all around the river Jordan, proclaiming, as verse 3 tells us, “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

            John is the one who prepares the way for the One to come.  John is the one who gives the message that Jesus is on the way.  John is the one to offer baptism in water, but he knows very well that the One to come will baptize with fire and the Holy Spirit. 

            But the word of God has called John to be the voice of preparation.  So that’s what he preaches.  Prepare.  “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth.” 

            Prepare.  Last week we were told to wait, to watch; to stay awake and to stay alert, because the coming of the Lord is like the coming of a thief in the night.  Unless we’re awake and bright eyed and bushy tailed, we’ll miss it.  We’ll be caught off guard.  But this week we have other kinds of work to do.  We have to prepare.  According to Malachi, we need to be washed with Fuller’s soap.  We need to be cleansed and brightened.  And the messenger of the Lord is the one to do this.  John the Baptist is like Fuller’s soap to our heart, mind and soul.  Prepare.

            But Malachi refers to more than just Fuller’s soap.  Even before he speaks of soap, he writes of refiner’s fire.  The messenger that Malachi talks of will not only wash us, he will refine us with fire.  He will refine us as a silversmith refines his chosen metal.  Our preparation is one of refining.

            The descendants of Levi will be purified like silver or gold.  They will be made clean and pure.  And as I said before, John the Baptist understood that his water baptisms could not compare with the fire baptisms of the Holy Spirit that would happen with the coming of the Messiah. 

            But what does it mean that we will be refined and purified with fire?  Does it mean that we must be burned before we can be pure?  Is this literal or figurative or a little of both? 

            I once read a story about a women’s Bible Study.  The women were studying this passage and other passages like it that spoke of being refined and purified like silver.  None of the women could really visualize what it meant to be refined like silver.  So one of the women decided to find out exactly what a silversmith did.

            She looked through the phone book and on-line and found the name of a silversmith.  She called him for an appointment and went to interview him. 

            After he had given her a tour of his workshop and shown her the tools of his trade, he demonstrated how he created his silver treasures.  First of all he hammered the silver into the shape and style he wanted.  Sometimes this included using a mold or a form to get the shape just right.  Then, to prevent cracks in the metal, he used heat to soften and refine the silver.  In the old days, a silversmith, such as Paul Revere, would have used a fired and bellows of some sort.  But today’s silversmiths more often use blowtorches. 

            The silversmith heated an object to show the woman how it was refined.  She was impressed with all of this, and asked him one final question.  “How do you know when the silver is refined to the exact point that you want?”

            He smiled at her and said, “That’s easy.  I know it’s done when I can see my reflection in the metal.”

            The messenger that God is sending is about preparation.  That preparation includes cleaning, preparing and it also means refining.  We will be refined with fire, the fire of the Holy Spirit, until we are pure.  We will be refined with fire until God’s reflection can be seen in us. 

            I do a lot of preparing in this season.  I make a lot of lists.  I scramble around trying to make ready.  But how much time do I really spend thinking about what I’m really preparing for?  And do I give any time at all to the notion that I might be the one who needs preparing?  I am the one who needs to be refined.  Refined to the point that God can see God’s reflection in me. 

            I’m not there yet.  There is still refining to be done.  But I pray this Advent that I’m a little closer, I’m a little more prepared, I’m a little more refined.  This Advent may soap and fire prepare and refine us all to be messengers of the good news, and reflections of God’s image to a hurting world.  Let all God’s children say “Amen.”

Project Advent: Close Up

            On a beautiful afternoon at the end of October my son Zach and I got to take a helicopter ride.  One of my parishioners is a pilot and owns a flight company.  He’d offered us this chance for adventure for a while, and we FINALLY got to take him up on his offer. 

            Zach and I were both excited, and I admit that I was a little nervous too.  I’m not afraid to fly, but I had never even stood next to a helicopter before, much less climbed in one and taken off.  I thought that the ride would be choppy and loud, but it was none of that.  It was nothing like I expected.  It was better!  Zach sat up front with Mark, and I sat in the back seat listening to their conversation and watching with wonder the landscape unfold underneath us. 

            I’ve been on plenty of airplanes over the course of my life.  I still remember the first time I flew with my mother from Nashville to Minneapolis when I was 4, and how I marveled at everything on the ground becoming so tiny and ant-like.  If you’ve flown you know that very quickly you lose sight of the ground altogether, and if you can see anything below you it’s so tiny it’s hard to make out any significant landmarks.

            But a helicopter is different.  You don’t fly as high in a helicopter.  You’re not hovering on the ground, but you are able to clearly pick out landmarks and places below you.  We flew over our house, Zach and Phoebe’s school, lakes, countryside, the interstate, the mall and our church.   As we hung momentarily over the church Mark and I both commented about how good it looked from the sky.  The building looked graceful and elegant, its dome gleaming in the afternoon sun.  But anyone who spends much time in our church knows the problems the building has, both inside and out.  Mark especially knows the problems the building has because he spends a large part of his time keeping the place running. 

Close up the dome is discolored and needs repair.  Close up the large columns at the front entrance are covered in rust.  Close up the semi-enclosed side porch where homeless people often take shelter has a ceiling that looks ready to collapse.  Close up there is a large chunk of plaster missing at the top of the left wall of the sanctuary.  Close up the third floor has sustained so much water damage, some rooms should just be gutted in order to have some use again.  Close up we have a small, aging congregation who is fierce in its love and loyalty to each other and to the congregation as a whole, but there is great debate as to what will come next – for the building and for us. 

Close up there are lots of homeless people in the neighborhood around the church.  Close up there are lots of hungry people and lost people and sad people.  Close up the problems and challenges, not just of our physical property but of the community in which we live and engage, seem overwhelming.  But for an hour or so I had the opportunity to see all of it from a different perspective.  For a little while I had the chance to step outside of it and myself and see my immediate world with new eyes.  I wondered as we flew if maybe, just maybe, that’s – WARNING!  Cheeeeeze alert.  What I’m about to say next may make some of you involuntarily roll your eyes and groan, but please be patient. 

I wondered as we flew if maybe, just maybe, that’s how God sees us.  (Brief pause until the groans subside).  I’m not trying to paint a picture of some smiling, removed deity hovering above us like a beneficent Santa Claus just watching us from afar.  I guess I see it as God having the ability and perspective to see all of the problems, disrepair, rust, crumbling walls and sadness that is the human condition but also being able to see the great beauty, the graceful lines and shining domes that is also the human condition.  

I think if there is one thing that keeps me believing in the divine, although so much evidence out there suggests the contrary, is my belief and understanding that God willingly, lovingly came into the close up.  How much easier would it have been if God had stayed outside of it all, focused only on the beauty?  But God became close up.  Isn’t that really what the incarnation is all about?  God becoming close up so we would know God close up.  God sees us close up, sees the terrible harm we do to one another, sees the destruction and the hurt, but never forgets the beauty.  That’s what we wait for during Advent.  That’s what we watch for.  God becoming close up. 

            Maybe we need to try a little harder to see us as God sees us.  Maybe we need to trust that the beauty is there in each one of us, alongside the bad.  I don’t think you have to believe in God to see the value in doing this either, to understand the value that comes when we see each person as having beauty first.  I am very conscious of the fact that I write this piece on the seventy-first anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor – a day that irrevocably changed our country and the world.  I am not so idealistic that I think just seeing the beauty in everyone would prevent all wars or the evil we inflict on one another.  But maybe it would.  Have we ever really tried? 

            I also know that if anyone needs a wake-up call to the importance of seeing the beauty in others first, it’s me.  Trust me I could make a significant list of the people I’d like to drop kick into next year.  On my best days, it is a challenge to think some of these folks have any beauty in them.  Yet as I realize that I am a mix of both, I also must acknowledge that they are as well.  Perhaps if I can see the beauty in them, the grace and the goodness, I will be better able to treat them in a way that allows all of that to shine forth. 

            I do know this.  I am loved, by God and by others, close up.  I am loved in spite of my flaws and failings, in spite of the myriad of ways I screw up and fall down.  I am loved.  So in this season of Advent and in every season, I am called to love back.  Close up.