AMS sermon, 9-28-14, Learned Anything Yet?

FRIENDLY PERSUASION    FINAL

A Sermon by the Rev. Janet L. Abel
Preached on Sunday, September 7, 2014

 

“We Are All One”

It was a statement by Mary Cuddeback, one of our own members, quoted by Art at the end of his sermon last week.  Mary and Carolyn Blake had happened to attend a meeting of the Buddhist group that meets upstairs in our classroom building on the same day that the press were invited there, so they were included in a nice article last week.  We enjoyed excellent coverage of our Buddhist group, and Mary’s observation was in the paper at the end of the reporter’s article and at the end of Art’s sermon as he discussed the many spiritual groups that meet here at First Congregational Church.

I agree completely with Mary’s statement.  “We are all one.”  But I have a question for you, as well.  In the reading of the New Testament lesson from Matthew 18 this morning, and based on Art’s sermon of last week, why is it that we don’t all get along?  It’s a fundamental question; you’ve heard it many times.  We’re all one.  Then why don’t we all get along?  In the passage Jesus gives some interesting advice.  I don’t know about you, but it’s a little daunting, all this confrontation that’s going on.  You’re living in a community, and if a member sins against you, well right there, we’d have to figure out what the sin was, and that could be its own sermon.  But then we’d have to discuss what sin actually is and what that might mean.

An “Intervention Sheet” for a

Congregational Church?  No Way!

I’m teaching Genesis with the residents of the home where I work, and we were just discussing sin in general.  That word means, “missing the mark, not hitting the target.”  We could go on about that.  But if a member sins against you, the advice of Jesus in Matthew 18: 15-20 is that you should go to that person and, if he or she still doesn’t listen to you, then you take two or three other members of the congregation, and you have an intervention.

Who wants to sign up for that?  Can you imagine having a sign-up sheet out in the hallway?  Our Intervention Sheet.  Well, somebody sinned against me so I need two or three people to come with me on Tuesday – gotta let ‘em know – and then the intervenors will listen and the whole church. . . . We could do this on Sundays.  That could be part of our Sunday morning service.  Well, I don’t think so, right?  Probably not.

The Great Verse Divide

Art mentioned in his sermon last week that the great verse divide in the Christian community was one of the fundamental questions that arose in the days after the death of Christ.  You’ve got the disciples, the originals, and James, Jesus’ brother, in Jerusalem doing their thing, converting people but also going to the temple and keeping kosher, and that’s what you had to do.  And then there’s Paul, traveling around the known world, going to places like Greece, and he was converting what they called Gentiles, people who aren’t Jewish, so the big question started to come up, over and over.  It started to go like this:  James and Paul, Jewish Christian, Gentile Christian.  What do we do?  Ultimately Paul won that particular argument.  But to be honest, we’ve been arguing it and other disagreements ever since.

“Getting Along” Doesn’t Get Along Well

in Some Church or Denominational Disputes

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem is for me a visual example of how we might get along but don’t.  According to some historians, this church was built on what might have been the location of Jesus’ grave after his crucifixion.  A big, ostentatious church was built on this site, and there’s a fancy slab where the Jews may have laid Jesus’ body after the Romans took it down from the cross, and then Jesus’ followers  laid it in the tomb.  Needless to say, the slab became very holy, as is the entire site.  The site is the very place where the Romans are thought to have crucified people.

Above the slab are three or four ornate lamps – kind of “churchy” lamps, not just ordinary light-bulb lamps but lamps that require oil and attendants to maintain them and fill them with fuel.  The Roman Catholics have a lamp, the Eastern Orthodox have a lamp, the Protestants have a lamp, and some other group does.  When you go and fill the oil in your particular denominational lamp, you are not allowed to touch the other three lamps, even if they’ve gone out.  Each denomination must go and fill its own lamp.  Is that ridiculous or what?  Why couldn’t the different groups employ one person as lamp-tender, I wondered?

The Great Carpet Debate

Why don’t we always get along?  I am reminded of the great carpet debate at First Presbyterian Church of Cape May, of which I was a part way back when I was still a member there.  It’s a beautiful church in a beautiful town.  Right down from the mall is this Presbyterian church on the corner of Decatur and Hughes.

At one point, our carpet was getting worn, and we had to replace it.  In favor of a new color, we had a blue faction, but at the time Cape May had green, so we had a green faction.  I was one of those in favor of keeping the carpet the same color, a very pretty green.  Then there was the blue faction because there was some blue in the stained-glass windows, and the colors would match.  And there was the red faction, who wanted the blood of Christ to be represented in the carpet.  The rest of us found that idea to be a little off-putting, that we had to have a bloody carpet.  It just didn’t seem appropriate, to be honest with you.

There was quite a debate, and it turned into quite a church meeting about the color of the carpet.  It was one of the longest debates we ever had.

In Literature, not Getting Along Benefits Plot

“Little Women” is one of my favorite childhood books, along with “Black Beauty.”  I loved both of them.  “Jane Eyre” was a third, but it was a little dour.  “Little Women,” as you know, is about four sisters growing up in the time of the Civil War with their mother Marmie.  It’s been made into a movie many times, the latest being quite a good one.  Poor Beth is the one who gets scarlet fever; it leaves her weak, and she dies before she turns 20.  At one point in the story, Beth says, “Birds in their little nest agree.”  But that’s not always true, is it?  The sisters do argue a lot among themselves.

If they didn’t argue, we wouldn’t have much of a story, would we?  I mean if it was just all sweetness and light between the sisters.  “I have an idea,” Jo would say, and Amy would answer, “Great, let’s do it.”  Not very entertaining.  Stories need action and tension.  Movies and books and plays often recount problems with people who don’t completely get along, this being essential to strong plot development.

Jo and Amy in particular are very different from each other.  Jo’s the writer, and she’s kind of eccentric.  She goes up to the attic and puts on a cap.  She’s the one based on Louisa May Alcott herself.  Amy’s a little vain, and she likes to paint.  She gets to go to Europe with Aunt March and so on.  The sisters are constantly at odds.

At another point in the story, Amy gets mad at Jo for not letting her go skating with Jo  and Laurie, so Amy burns a book of Jo’s personal essays, and she is furious when she discovers this.  These disagreements not only make for a more interesting story, but they make for a more believable one.  As sweet as “Little Women” is, it is believable and relatable.  We can relate to it because the characters are not perfect.

My title for today’s sermon comes from a movie, “Friendly Persuasion,” about the Quakers.  Have any of you seen it?  It’s a good oldie, but a goodie, right?  Gary Cooper plays a man named Jess Birdwell.  The Quakers, as you know, are very peaceful, loving people, basing their lives on the gospel.  “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  They take that Golden Rule, and they really believe it.  But the story itself is not completely peaceful.  The Civil War erupts, their daughter falls in love with a soldier, and so it goes.  Life isn’t perfect, even in “Friendly Persuasion.”

I have a similar problem with a book I was given.  Now I don’t want to offend anyone, but I always realize that, when you’re going to say something negative about a book, somebody out there loves it.

Anyway, I have a friend in Lancaster who sent me a book by a woman named Jan Karon, who wrote the Mitford series.  She said I would like the book because it’s all about an Episcopalian rector in a small town in North Carolina – perfect for me.  So she sent it to me, and I felt compelled to read it.  I liked it; I didn’t love it.  I didn’t find it very relatable.  It’s too perfect.  Everything works together for good.  The characters are constantly quoting the Bible.  Nothing wrong with that, but you know, Philippians 4: 13?  I had to look up that citation because I didn’t know offhand what it means.

I had read an article about Jan Karon and felt that her depiction of small-town life, wasn’t necessarily accurate.  Karon based her books on the work of a British author named Miss Read, a schoolteacher who in the 50’s wrote a series of books.  So I decided to get one from the library.  Read’s book seemed to me qualitatively better than Karon’s, although both are a little sweet.  But Read’s book is real and funny, while in my opinion Karon needs a better sense of humor, among other things, but her people are interesting because of their foibles and disagreements.

The “Clash of Civilizations”

In the Face of Humanity and Divinity

But the characters are undergirded by something.  “We are all one.”  What does being “one” really mean?  “The Clash of Civilizations,” a famous text that I had to read in seminary, is a very small book, but I recommend it to you.  When you watch and listen to the news, it’s kind of tough, isn’t it?  Groups like ISIS are everywhere.  And we know full well that they could infiltrate our lives here and in England and elsewhere.  The First World could certainly have members of ISIS among their own populations.

Samuel Huntington, a political scientist at Harvard, wrote the book, the full title of which is “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.”  Although published quite a while ago, the book was republished in 2011.  His thesis is still current – that this clash of civilizations is yet to come.  The East and the West are like two fists butted up against each other.  They’re fundamentally different from each other.

Yes, we’re all children of God, but we’ve got sharp differences in history, language, culture, religion, and the like.  The world is becoming a smaller place and therefore our interactions with each other are increasing.  The West is at its peak of power, bringing with it much resentment from the East.  And the gap between the rich and the poor is growing around the world.  We’ve got these fundamental differences, and they’re not going away anytime soon.

The Definition of Oneness Is All-Encompassing Love

Underlying all this tradition and culture, language and religion – and we know all that is real – is our humanity and our divinity.  We are all creatures of God, and therefore there is an essential oneness that undergirds all our differences.  It’s what is under the pews here.  It’s what brings us here.  It’s what makes us all one – all of us, as different as we are.

And what is that oneness?  What does it really look like?  What’s the word being used?  Love.  The Golden Rule.  Paul gives it to us again in Romans.  Jesus certainly repeats it.  You take those commandments, and they matter.  If you treat each other as you would be treated yourself, then you are obeying what’s called the Ten Commandments.  And that’s love.  In simple, short form, love each other as you love yourself.  And if you love yourself, you should love each other.

And then we’re reminded in the passage from Mathew, which is, as you know, a little alarming, where it deals with how to handle a confrontation.  But then Jesus ends it with, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”  It kind of reminds us what’s here with us always.  Where there’s even a small group, two or three, we admit that would be a very small congregation, but where they are, there is God.  And you can take that word “God” and put love in it.  Where two or three are, there is love.

The Importance of Love Undergirding Our Community

That’s what undergirds our community here at First Congregational Church.  It’s Jesus Christ  and the love of God.  Even if we can’t always see it or feel it, you know that it’s always there.  I know some of your history, I know your history since I’ve been with you, since Art’s been here.  But we don’t always completely agree, do we?  We’re different people, and we have different ideas.  Maybe at one point we too shall discuss our carpet situation.  We too will also survive that trial because it’s love.  Love is always there, but people sometimes forget that, and the results can be tragic.

Rob Bell is a good example of remembering the importance of love.  He’s a former evangelical minister, who was pastor at a big-steeple, very conservative church.  He once put up on the bulletin board an article about Mahatma Gandhi, a great leader in India who used peaceful methods to achieve independence from the United Kingdom, and of course Martin Luther King, Jr., based his nonviolent resistance heavily on the examples of Jesus and Gandhi.

Bell happened to be walking by the bulletin board in the corridor one day and saw scrawled underneath the picture of Ghandi a startling legend:  “Gandhi’s in hell!  Reality check.”  That’s what a member of the church had written underneath the picture of Gandhi.  This desecration stopped Bell in his tracks.  It made him realize something about what he was preaching and the kind of theology his church was giving out.  Gandhi’s in hell?  How could that be?  Love.  Love is the only thing that matters.

And so Bell wrote a book called “Love Wins.”  The most important thing is love.  If love doesn’t win, then we all lose.

Amen.

JLA sermon 9-7-14 Friendly Persuasion.docxreedited

BRAVERY

A Sermon by the Rev. Janet L. Abel
Preached on Sunday, August 17, 2014

 

Fighting Clerical Frump

Today’s sermon, “Bravery,” is Part II of the sermon I preached last week, which was entitled “Fear.”  It was all about fear, and now the flip side is “Bravery.”  Wearing the denim stole I have on this morning represents an act of bravery according to a blog I used to read on line.  It was devoted to urging ministers to dress better.  The writer, a woman minister, was fighting clerical frump, as she called it, because our profession is not known to dress well.  In fact, when I became a minister, I decided then and there to throw out my heels because I could get away with wearing flats, and no one would care since my shoes barely peeked out from under my robe.

“Hooray,” I thought.  I’m wearing sneakers right now because I have to, but one of the author’s blog columns was about this denim stole, made by an artist who sells her wares on-line on Etsy.  It’s a great site, and it has all kinds of artists who sell all kinds of things, from clothing to jewelry.  You name it.  If you’re looking for something handmade, you can go to Etsy, and you might be able to find it.  Some of the prices are outrageous, and for some of them you can get a bargain.

That’s where I found the artist, who was mentioned by the antifrump clerical lady decrying the observation that no one would ever wear a denim stole.  Oh, I would!  Especially here at our church.  I think it’s great.  Denim is the stuff of life, and we all wear jeans nowadays.  I’ve come a long way.  There was a time when I would not wear pants in the pulpit.  It was brave, the lady minister said.

The Violent Factor in Bravery

We can define “bravery” in many ways, can’t we?  Who and what is brave in this life?  Now you know I love movies.  Arlene and I talk about the movies every week.  Was it worth our time?  Movies on line.  Movies on TV.  Movies in the theater.  A lot of movies are about bravery.  About righting a wrong.  About doing the right thing.  And often, unfortunately, violence is a major part of that theme, isn’t it?  Maybe this influence derives from video games.

Movies, especially action movies, are becoming more and more frenetic, faster-paced, with lots of violence.  You might be misled into thinking that what is brave must be violent, in the movies at least.  Must one throw a punch to be brave, as characters so often do?  Is it in fact braver to walk away from combat, to choose your battles, as you do in daily life?  When is it brave to throw a punch?  When is it brave to grab an Uzi, like Sylvestor Stallone, and to  have a helicopter and all the necessary accoutrements of an inexpendable hero?

We’re so used to it that sometimes I have to stop and think, this movie is so violent it’s numbing, and what is it about, really?  What is really brave?  Bravery isn’t always violent.  In fact, it often isn’t.

Defining Bravery with Witchcraft and Wizardry

I’m a great lover of all kinds of movies.  I like adult films too, but I love “Harry Potter.”  One of that series was on TV last night.  I don’t care how many times I’ve seen it, I’d watch it again.  It takes me away for three hours in that magical world, the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  I have made the trip to Harry Potter World in Florida and had a great time.  It was very crowded, but I didn’t mind because I took that amazing ride through the castle.

The end of the story was quite something.  It became more adult in focus, and it certainly had some violence.  As they were fighting, the students and Harry arrayed themselves against the ultimate evil in the person of Lord Voldemort.  The story makes plain that evil does exist, but it also makes plain that good is greater than evil.  Why is Harry Potter brave?  It isn’t just the fighting, right?

Near the end of the story, Harry has sacrificed himself.  Part of him must die because he’s got part of Lord Voldemort in him, and he has to die in the final confrontation with that person.  He ends up in a kind of heavenly way station, a train station that looks kind of like heaven.  Dumbledore was there for those who had died previously, and he tells Harry that he is a brave man.  What makes Harry brave?  He’s standing up and doing the right thing, even in the face of incredible evil.  Evil so scary you couldn’t name the name.

Hiccup Finds Bravery in Refusing to Kill Toothless

A more-recent movie that I loved is “How to Train Your Dragon.”  I talked a resident into watching this with me over at St. Louise, and there’s something about cartoons and old people.  They just can’t get into them.  There’s a certain level of distance between them.  It’s like, “Oh, it’s a cartoon.  I don’t like ….  That’s kid stuff.”  The oldsters grew up.  When they were younger, cartoons were for kids.  But there’s a kid in all of us.  Cartoons today are much more sophisticated and beautiful, and the story lines go deeper.

So I highly recommend “How to Train Your Dragon” as a really good film.  It’s has two major themes as I see them, number one being the bond between humans and their animals, which is really profound.  We have the responsibility to take good care of our animals.  The second major theme concerns the Vikings, who are depicted very loosely in this village.  They’re killing dragons because that’s what they know.  The dragons are evil and have to be stopped, and the Vikings feel duty-bound to kill them.

But along comes a young man called Hiccup.  What makes him great?  Well, he’s the hero of the story, and it’s important to know this because it dovetails with our Bible story, which follows.  Hiccup is his own person; he’s not the usual Viking at all.  He is the runt of the litter.  He’s meek; he’s not big and brawny.  He doesn’t want to kill things.  And when it comes time for him to catch the dragon that he names Toothless, he bravely opposes tribal tradition, opining, “I can’t kill it.”  He looks into Toothless’ eyes and says, “I saw that he was as scared as I was.  You know he’s a living creature, and I can’t do it.”  So the dragon becomes Hiccup’s pet.  And Toothless couldn’t be more charming or funny.  Truly, this movie is worth your time.

Authenticity is important in bravery.  Hiccup finally claims his place in the tribe as a dragon whisperer, and eventually he will become the chief.  He is doing the right thing.  He’s also doing the right thing by being himself.  That’s totally against the customs of the rest of his tribe, including his dad, and that is the sign of his bravery.

Jesus’ Mettle Challenged by a Canaanite Woman

Our scripture lesson today is from Matthew 15: 21-28, and it’s repeated in Mark.  This lesson is unusual, as you might have noticed, in that it is a lectionary passage for the Protestant church, but it is not included in the Roman Catholic lectionary.  The RC skips it.  You might wonder why.  Well, let’s review it a little because it’s completely unique.

Jesus and his disciples have gone to the other side of the lake known as the Sea of Galilee.  Last week’s sermon was about fear because, as the disciples were crossing the lake by boat, they ran into a terrible storm.  Jesus met them by walking on the water, and the storm died down after Jesus and Peter, who tried but failed to duplicate Jesus’ miracle, both got back in the boat.  Then they all sailed to the other side, which is biblical code for the Canaanite side, the Gentile side, the non-Jewish side of the Sea of Galilee.

There, they ran into somebody called a Canaanite woman.  Being a Canaanite, you know from your Bible that, all the way back to the time of Moses, this was the enemy.  But she seemed to know right away who Jesus was.  She implored Jesus, “Have mercy on me, Lord, son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”  The woman is a foreigner.  She is non-Jewish.  On all levels, she is not supposed to talk to Jesus or his disciples.  She is not supposed to go anywhere near them, yet she braved all of that because her daughter was ill.

And how did Jesus and his disciples react?  Jesus had just been preaching that what defiles a person is not what you put into your mouth, speaking of kosher rules, but what comes out of it – deceit, envy, fear – comes from the heart.  Here, Jesus is being totally racist.  It’s the one story, really, where he appears not only as human but also as a disagreeable human.  “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  And the disciples are going, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.”  Screaming in our ear, we don’t know her.  But she perseveres.  She kneels in front of Jesus, “Lord, help me.”  And what does Jesus say to her?  “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

Kneeling, She Wins the Face-Off

Some commentators have tried to soften that up.  “Jesus would never call anyone a dog.”  That’s been kind of an epithet forever, right?  I love dogs, but when you call a person a dog, it’s not a good thing.  Some commentators have said Jesus meant puppy, like a term of endearment.  That is not so.  He is not saying, “Oh, you little puppy.”  He is saying, “Dog.”  He is saying, “You are lower than a Jewish human being.  I will have nothing to do with you.”  Jesus is saying this.

You might understand why the Roman Catholics try not to bother with this passage.  It is, as scholars say, problematic, although it is showing Jesus at his most human.  But even Jesus had his bigoted moments.  He needs correction here, and he gets it from her when she says, “Yes, lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.”  Wow!  That’s something!  She is great!  She’s not giving up.  She’s totally authentic.  She’s breaking every societal rule and she turns the argument on its head.  She’s besting Jesus in polemics.  How often does that happen?  No Pharisee, no scribe, no leader of the Jerusalem temple can do this and does not do so in all the gospels.

Yet a Canaanite woman does it.  She wins the war of words.  “Woman, great is your faith!”  “And her daughter was healed instantly.”  So this story has quite a bit to say, but we don’t know her name, just her nationality.  She was incredibly brave.  She was herself, and she pushed until she earned healing for her daughter.  And Jesus said, How “great is your faith!”  He doesn’t say that often with the disciples.  He more likely says to them, “You’re not getting it yet?”  “O you of little faith,” he has just told Peter, who sank in the water.  To the Canaanite woman, he said, How “great is your faith!”

Bravery in Real Life

Just a couple days ago, there was an article in the paper about a woman reporter in Ukraine writing about the government, but what was really going on was that she was writing about Russia.  Talk about bravery.  I wanted to bring this up because all of us, I’m sure, have been affected on some level by the death of Robin Williams this week.  Often celebrities die and it doesn’t affect me directly.  Lauren Bacall was agreat actress and a beauty, and I noticed her passing.  But Robin Williams committing suicide at 63 was heartbreaking.  Like many of you, I grew up with him and loved him without really knowing him.  So I feel really bad, all the more so because I’ve experienced a suicide in my own family.  I know what Williams’ kids went through.

It takes bravery to age serenely.  Maybe especially in America, where the emphasis is on being young.  However, I work with people, all kinds of people, including my residents at the homes.  Day in and day out, they face aging, and some of them have a very rough road.  Facing that road is true bravery.

I don’t know if everyone can look upon what Robin Williams did as bravery.  Some do, and in my opinion that act was brave.  Yet I think that accepting a diagnosis like Parkinson’s and trying to go on is much more brave.  For the sake of his family and for his own sake, I’m truly sorry about Williams’ suicide.  I do wish him peace, finally, but I think he wasn’t at peace with himself in life.

People in the mental health field have done studies indicating that serious clinical depression has been linked to Parkinson’s as well as to Type 2 Diabetes, and there are other serious diseases that go hand-in-hand with depression.  It’s real.  Sometimes it ends as Williams did.  It’s brave to admit depression, and it’s brave to admit you need help.

Happiness Found in Dark Times

There’s a young woman whom I read about who spoke at her family’s funeral.  Maybe you’ve heard of her, Cassidy S.  She was 15, and she lived in Spring, Texas.  Unfortunately, her aunt got divorced, and her ex-husband, Ronald Lee Haskell, was very angry about that, so angry he snapped.  He took a gun and went to Cassidy’s house, where he killed her father and mother and her four younger siblings on July 9^th.  Cassidy herself was shot, but she lived and played dead.  Haskell left the house, and she realized that he was going to her grandparent’s house, so she called them and got them out of the house.  Then Cassidy called the police and told them who had committed the murders.

A horrible thing to live through, yet she was incredibly brave.  At the funeral, Cassidy quoted Dumbledore, of all people, the head of Hogwarts in the film “Harry Potter.”  She said, as Dumbledore had said in the face of great evil, “Happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”  Cassidy then gave the symbol for love.  J.K. Rowling heard of her remarks and sent the girl a letter and a package just the other day.

Sometimes in life, we know that extraordinary bravery is required.  Like Cassidy.  Like a firefighter or a police officer on the job.  Or the doctor or nurse in the ER.  Like a relief worker in Nigeria right now, not leaving his or her post in spite of the dangers of Ebola.  Like a reporter covering stories that he or she knows could lead to their deaths.  Like a whistle-blower at a company.

You and I may never face anything like these stories, but bravery is required in our lives also.  To light that light in the darkness.  To speak up when it’s hard.  To confront a friend who’s going down the wrong path.  To be ourselves, totally and completely in a judgmental world.

One must remember to keep the light on.

Amen.

JLA sermon 8-17-14 Fear.docxcommentedon

SOWERS, SOILS, AND SEEDS

A Sermon by the Rev. Janet L. Abel
Preached on Sunday, July 20, 2014

 

The Problem with Chestnuts: Hard Shells and Awful Taste

You’ve heard today’s Scripture lesson before, I know, the story from Matthew 13 about the sower, the seeds, and the soils.  This is what we call a “chestnut” in preaching because it is a parable you’ve heard many times.  It’s kind of like an Easter sermon:  It’s hard to do something new with a subject you know so well.  Most of us have heard it preached in one particular way, with which I don’t especially agree.

Chestnuts make me think of roasting chestnuts in Manhattan.  When I moved there, I bought my first roasted chestnut from a street vendor.  Have any of you ever done that?  They smell so good, and then you eat one.  Ugh, oh dear!  I never did that again.  They smell really good, and they’re part of the Christmas experience at Rockefeller Center, but take it from me, don’t buy them.  They’ve been sitting in that fire pit for 20 years or so, and that’s exactly how they taste.

This is the problem with preaching “chestnuts.”  They’re really hard, and you’ve heard them many times over.  How to hear them anew?  How to hear once more about the sower, the seeds, and the soils?

If you noticed the signboard out front, it doesn’t reflect the full sermon title.  It’s either sowers and seeds or sowers and soils.  We have reached the limit of the number of S’s that we have for use on the signboard.  Our sexton, Cindy, called me in the middle of the week:  “What are we going to do?”  And I said, “Let’s take a word off.  It’s okay.”  There were more S’s needed (twelve for two signs) than we have in our letter case (ten).  But I wanted to talk about all three elements of the parable, which is why I came up with this title, “Sowers, Soils, and Seeds.”

Different Roles for Different Stages

We all know there are multiple roles we play in life, depending on what stage we’re in, where we are, who we’re with, and what we’re doing.  Life changes, and roles change too.  I once heard a children’s sermon on this subject, and the pastor used hats.  Think of all the different hats we wear in our lives, sometimes several at once, subject to how busy we are and how many irons we have in the fire.  Life can be pretty complex.

Once in a while I think about childhood in summertime, and as I’m trudging back and forth to work, those days come to mind.  Do you remember how endless summer seemed, how carefree?  But I know it wasn’t.  I know children have stress.  It’s different from the stress of adulthood, but it’s often the result of trying to please adults or parents.  Today, of course, kids are really busy in summertime.  Lots of them go to different schools or camps for special activities or join various sports teams that require regular attendance and practice.  For many children, their time seems more highly programmed than in the past.

For lots of us, though, looking back through the lens of midlife, it seems as though we had an endless amount of time in summer to lie on our backs and watch the clouds, as with time, go floating by.  When was the last time you did that?  It’s relaxing to gaze at cloud formations and try to discern what they look like.  Skipping around and throwing stones and walking through the woods and collecting flowers – they are all melded into a wonderful time of year.  We weren’t at all bored by the end of August, I remember.

In August the thought of the relentless approach of schooltime may have seemed to some like the flip side of childhood, but some of us generally loved school.  It was very structured; I liked that.  As time went on and we dispersed to various colleges, we loved the fact that, even if you had a horrible class, which was sometimes the case, it eventually came to an end.  It was nine weeks of feeling horrible, and then it was over.  Then you’d begin again.  Being a student has been one of my principal roles in life, and it still lingers on.  So it is with everyone.

Work is also a good thing generally, at least for me.  Like school, it gives us something to do, a purpose, a structure.  In my case, it’s the nursing home and assisted living, in addition to my responsibilities here at First Congregational Church.  You know I work at the homes Monday through Friday, and I now have the additional duty of leading services there on most Sunday afternoons.

A Prescription for Just Sitting:  Get Up and Go

Do you like to visit nursing and assisted-living homes?  I ask because there are plenty of people who don’t, even though I myself spend a lot of time in that situation.  For me it has become my world, but it’s not a place most people like to visit.  When asked why, they tell me, “Oh, Janet, it’s so depressing.  I don’t want to end up there.  I don’t want to end up sitting in a hallway or worse.  I don’t want to be reminded that’s how life can end.”  These remarks are true; we don’t like such negative thoughts about our own ending.  Truth to tell, many people actually fear them.

But not everybody is just sitting around.  We keep the residents very busy if they can physically or mentally do an activity.  We try our best to get everyone active and involved, and in fact people are more socially involved in assisted-living facilities than they were in their own homes, especially if they have a physical ailment and can’t get out.

Nowadays bingo, lessons of one kind or another, musical performances, trivia games, Bible study, and the like are all right down the hall.  Friends too are right down the hall.  The residents don’t eat alone; they’re really not living alone.  And should one get into some kind of difficulty such as a fall or an ailment, there’s also a nurse right down the hall.

I’ve come to realize that in some ways these facilities are a great place to be.  They’re much safer and more socially active than in a private home.  You’re less alone.  The residents and I talk about that a lot, what stage of life they’re in and what roles they’re playing.  They still have some hats to try on, although the kinds of hats they wear change from time to time.

Life is less physically active for the residents in many ways, and they’re doing less than at a younger age.  That’s a problem.  A lot of us have physical ailments that get worse by sitting too much.  We have to force ourselves to get going.  When you have a home or an apartment, you’ve got to get up and do the things you must do, even if you’re hurting.  This actually helps how we feel.  Got to make the bed, got to make the meal, got to clean.  It’s actually a good thing.

For most of my residents, however, they don’t have to do such chores.  They sit more, so it feels worse when they actually do move.  Depression is also a problem for the elderly.  It’s been estimated that a good 80 percent of the residents I work with are clinically depressed.  And why is that?  Much of the cause of nonclinical depression is that the residents are not doing enough, and I think that the main contributing factor is that they don’t feel they still have a purpose in life.  Their roles have declined, so why are they still around, they ask themselves.  Many of the people I talk with are afraid to reveal such feelings to me.

We have five or six people who are over a hundred years old, and they say to me, “What’s the deal?”  “Where’s God in this?”  “I’m not supposed to be here, but here I am.”  How to deal with that kind of attitude is something I have thought about during my entire time at Elizabeth Church Manor.  It’s been eleven years now, and it’s tough.

How do you give people the gift of purpose in their lives when they are limited in their physical or emotional ability to be active participants in their own lives?  You think about what they can do and try to let them do it.  Take your hands off, exert less control, and let people do what they can do because it really does matter.  Having a role, however small, helps people.

Sowers, Seeds, and Soils – All Are Roles for Us

Our parable today is a famous one, as mentioned at the outset.  I deliberately didn’t read the entire excerpt, but there’s an explanation.  The disciples turned to Jesus and asked, in essence, What does that paragraph about the sower really mean?  Jesus gives an explanation, but I don’t buy it, not really.  Jesus rarely gives an explanation for his parables.

When Are We Like Soils?

He does it twice in Matthew, and this is the orthodox church talking.  Here’s what it means:  You’re all soil, and you’d better be good soil because I’m the sower, giving you the word of God.  It’s all going to depend on whether you are good soil or not.  Is the seed going to bounce right off?  If that’s the case, if you’re a concrete path or you’re choked with thorns or you’ve got rocks, then you’re done.

Well that’s really nice.  Thank you, Jesus.  Let’s move on.  Let’s hope for good soil.  That’s the way it was preached to me when I was a kid.  You know I was a Baptist.  Then it was always presented in a very matter-of-fact way:  Be good soil or else.  Be the one that’s chosen, be the elect or else.  Two ladies are in a field; they’re both working.  Then the end comes, and one’s gone.  Don’t be the one who remains.  As a Baptist, we heard this over and over.  We even watched films that were scarey for a kid.  People on a plane, and boom, the end comes.  Hopefully you’re either up in heaven or you’re not on that plane.

So are we soil, stuck in that role?  Or can we in fact cultivate ourselves?  That’s what we do to our soil.  As you know, I’m not good at gardening, but we can take the rocks out of our soil.  Take the thorns out, make sure the seed doesn’t get on the path.  But what if we’re all three?  What if life is more complicated than simply being a type of soil?  Just a responder, just a passive participant in life, responding to the seed that’s being flung at us?  What if we’re sowers?  Or seeds?  Or sometimes we’re all three at once.

At different times in our lives, there are different symbols.  Remember, Jesus taught in parables, and parables are symbolic.  He talked about something very earthy, very practical.  Here’s something I think you can relate to:  Sowers, soils, and seeds.  But he also talked about life and people and roles, the roles that we play.

When Are We Like Sowers?

The classic image, of course, is that Jesus is the sower, giving us the seed, and we’d better respond.  But I think we’re sowers too.  At many times, we are giving out a message, maybe all the time.  We can think about the message in a minute, but we’re always sowing something, aren’t we?  Giving something out, something that’s coming from inside.  Is it love?  Is it irritation?  Is it hate?

What is it that we give out in our words, in our tone, in our time, in the things that we do, in the things that are important to us and the people that we spend time with, in the work that we do, and in the play?  We’re constantly sowing.  Hopefully, it’s love and grace and kindness and mercy.  Hopefully, it’s the slow word and not the quick, irritable word – something we all work on every day.

I have two rocks in my home.  One is new, and it says “Faith,” of which I always need reminders.  The other rock, which I’ve owned for years, bears the word “Patience.”  So I’m stuck in a hard place, between “Faith” and “Patience.”

I’m always working on the kind of seeds I’m sowing.  Think about how the seed is sown:  In the old days, the sower carried a big bag filled with seeds, which he scooped out by the fistful or with a trowel.  Then he went whoosh with his hand, scattering the seeds in a careful semicircular pattern on the ground.  That’s not how we sow today, is it?  When one seeds a garden, it’s done more carefully.  Dig a hole, and place the seeds so the plants are a certain space apart and are not overcrowded.

Once again, I’m not very good at this if you see my garden, but the old-time sower obviously required more seed per yard of coverage.  Whoosh.  The seed goes everywhere.  We’re not stopping to judge who is receiving the seed.  It is sown to everyone.

When Are We Like Seeds?

I think we’re seeds as well as sowers.  Sometimes we’re receivers, but other times we’re the actual thing that’s being planted in someone else’s garden, and for good reason.  It has been said that we’re in a specific place and time for a reason.  Certain residents and I are there at the same time.  We intersect, and sometimes we grow in each other’s lives.

The following quotation is from Macbeth, not one of my favorite Shakespearean plays.  I took a course and had to read them all, but that one is particularly bloody.  Macbeth goes down the path of murder and keeps going until he himself is killed by Macduff.  Banquo is the good guy.  He dies early on, but not before the king has said to him, “You are dear to my heart,” to which Banquo replies, “If I grow on your heart, let the harvest be your own.”  Beautiful imagery, using seeds and sowing.

I believe we are planted in different places for good reason.  We blossom in certain soils.  In others, we don’t, perhaps because we hit a concrete path or some rocks or thorns, and so we move on.  But we’re here because we’re supposed to be here, blooming in each other’s gardens as congregants and as members and friends of First Congregational Church.

When are we soil?  I think we are soil.  We are receivers as well as givers as well as the thing itself.  Sometimes I think we can be the garden path, hard as a rock.  And the seeds we’re getting aren’t going to make it.  They’re just going to bounce right off the rocks.  Why is that?  I think the garden path and the rocks and the sower are all pretty much related.  We’re sometimes too distracted to play the role that’s needed of us at the moment.

So Much to Learn and to Receive

There are times when I have to work at my role.  In the afternoon when it’s really hot, and I must go to a resident’s room and sit there while he or she starts talking, forcing myself to think, okay now, really listen carefully.  Yet I’m still thinking about going to the store after work to get half-and-half, eggs, and whatever else is needed.  Now the visit’s over, and I haven’t been there.  I’ve been on the garden path, and if the resident was planting a really wonderful seed, I missed it.  It’s not going to blossom in my life because I wasn’t there to hear it.

Of course we’re never supposed to do that.  We must not be distracted but rather present, open to all, represented by the good soil.  We must be soil to the sowers and seed and to the residents.  It can be depressing to go to a nursing home or an assisted-living facility, but there’s so much to learn and to receive there.  As some of you have undoubtedly done, sometimes I have had to force myself to go and have talked about the feeling that you must force yourself to go:  I’ve got to go to Wilson, I’ve got to go visit, I’ve got to go see Mrs. Jones.  I don’t really want to, but when there, I slow myself down, take out the rocks and thorns and then listen.

Working at these facilities, I have received so much more than ever expected, and sometimes the seeds I’ve received have truly blossomed.  There is so much wisdom, so much experience, so much love to be found in these homes.  The residents need visiting; they need your time; they need you to stop and be good soil for their seeds.  They are good sowers in that moment, and they still have a role to play.  We have to be open to it; we have to take the time.

If it’s true in the nursing home, it’s even more true in the hospital.  And in the pew, the supermarket aisle, the desk, the neighborhood, everywhere.  As a caregiver, you’ve just got to slow down.  That’s really the thing that allows us to receive more and to be gracious about it.  And when we’re giving out, we’re both sowers and receivers.  It’s wonderful when you know someone’s really receiving, hearing us, taking the time.  And it’s as true here in the congregation as it is anywhere else.

Sometimes in our lives, we are caregivers.  A lot of us are way more comfortable in that role.  Have you ever been a care-needer?  Not as comfortable, but there are times when you need to receive and not give.  We need to allow ourselves to receive.  Frankly, I have trouble even hearing a compliment.  Sometimes it’s deflected:  “Is that a new blouse?  I love that on you.”  “Oh, this is old.  You’ve seen it a million times.”  I’m a garden path, bouncing your seed right off.  I don’t let it in, yet people want to give.

The adult and the child.  A lot of us have been there.  You have roles to play.  When you were a child, as in summertime, you needed care from your parents, and it was given.  Then one day, it happens, it changes.  The roles are reversed.  You’re giving the bath or you’re making the meal or you’re bandaging the knee.  You’re the caregiver, and they’re the care-needer.  Love you forever, and you realize that this is life.

Our roles change, but they’re all needed and necessary.  We’re all soils, seeds, and sowers.  We’re all three.

Amen.

We Are Not Alone

A Sermon by the Rev. Janet L. Abel
Preached on Sunday, July 13, 2014

 

What Jesus Didn’t Say

We are not alone.  A great passage of Scripture and one of my personal favorites is the excerpt from Matthew 11: 28 that I just read (NRSV):  “Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens.”  There are times in our lives when we know that this excerpt hits us in a special way.  We need these timeless words.  Other times we may be less vulnerable and less receptive to them.  So what makes a burden heavy?  By its very definition, a burden is always heavy.

Here’s what Jesus didn’t say:  Come unto me all you who are skipping with happiness.  Come unto me all you who have not a care in the world, you who are completely happy.  Know that this invitation is issued to those who have some burden they are carrying.  The weight of the world is on their shoulders.  In the Greek – which I often bring up since I suffered through an entire year of Greek – it translates as “all those who toil and having been laden.”

We’re all toilers at something at some time.  Thankfully, however, work doesn’t always feel like toil, does it?  Every job, inside and outside the home, can sometimes feel like toil, and at other times it’s a blessing.  Aside from the obvious, work has seasons, like life.  At times work is wonderful; it gives us purpose, something to do, and it goes well.  At other times it really feels like toil.  It’s both, a little like toil, nothing major.

You know I have two cats at home.  One, named Steve, is two and a bit of a character.  We’re close, and I occasionally joke that Steve is my fiancé.  People at work are confused because I sometimes wear my mother’s diamonds.  When he’s bad, which is frequently, I take the ring off.  This morning when I got up, the curtains were on the floor, with the curtain-rod brackets down somewhere on a chair.  I thought, that’s just great!  The last thing I wanted to do was to hang curtains before going to work.  But I did.  It was a bit toilsome, but not bad.

The Seasons of Life Include Both Toil and Rest

Life has its seasons, and, like life, work is sometimes toil and sometimes not.  The second half of the invitation is for all those who are carrying heavy burdens.  What might those burdens be?  What is it that can make life heavy?  But burdens are a fact of life, aren’t they?  A burden is a load that we’re given or that we take on.  We can assume a burden either way.  It can result from a diagnosis of disease, from a job that ends with no other job in sight, from a new job that’s just beginning, from a new term of office here at the church, from a family member who’s in trouble, or from any one of hundreds of other causes of a new burden.

I have a friend for whose husband we prayed for a long time.  He died in early May.  Then just a couple of weeks ago, her sister came to my friend’s front door at 5:30 in the morning – you know that’s not a good sign – and told her that her grandson had been in a serious car accident.  He lingered between life and death for weeks in the ICU, and it felt too heavy for my friend.  She was being handed too much, on top of grieving for her husband.  She was additionally burdened with worry about her grandson, not knowing whether he was going to make it or not.

Sometimes we’re given too many burdens at once.  It’s been said that we’re not given any more than we can carry, but that’s not true, is it?  Occasionally we get too much.  And then there’s the thing itself that happens, the cause of the worry and anxiety that surround it.  That too is a terrible burden.  Sometimes I think it’s often worse than the thing itself.  Anxiety and fear cut us off, isolate us.  That’s also an awful burden.  I had been thinking about illness itself, but isolation is one of the worst things about being sick.  Whether mentally or physically, we feel cut off.  We feel as though no one understands what we’re going through when we’re ill.

A Prescription for Rest

“Come to me all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”  Oh, that word “rest.”  That’s a much more agreeable word, isn’t it, than “burden”?  What comes to your mind when I say the word “rest”?  What is your favorite image of rest?  I think there’s nothing more restful than lolling about in a hammock on a summer day, when you should be doing yard work.  If you come to my house, you can tell I’ve made my peace with weeds.  I’ve decided that they deserve as much of a chance at life as do plants.

There’s something about hammocks.  I sleep better there than almost anywhere else.  My couch also comes to mind when I think about rest.  It faces the TV, the stereo, and the fireplace.  I love my couch, I really do.  And as I get older, I have to tell you, there are times when I’m toiling that I picture my couch and can’t wait to get home to it.

Vacations are a special treat in these summer months.  A lot of you have been away or might be going away.  Beach or mountains, camp.  Swimming and grilling, picnics.  Good sleep at night is good rest, and that is a blessing when we realize that insomnia deprives some of us of sleep.  That’s a burden, not being able to sleep.  And after a good rest on vacation, there’s less pain on sitting or standing.  Some of us know what that’s like on a daily basis.  And perhaps the ability to rid ourselves of anxiety, of fear, of isolation.  That’s no easy thing to do, is it?

“Take My Yoke Upon You”

In the three last verses of Matthew 11, Jesus is getting at how to do just that.  Don’t we all want to hand over our burdens?  Don’t we want to worry less?  Don’t we want the load of what we’re carrying at least to feel lighter?  But frankly, we can’t always hand off what we’ve been handed in life.  It’s our load to carry.  But Jesus said to us, “Take my yoke upon you.”  Excuse me?  When I first read that, I thought, “How does that lighten our load?”

And what is a yoke anyway?  You’ve seen it in the movies, or maybe some of you know from a farm what a yoke is, how oxen are yoked together.  It’s a big two-piece wood-and-metal contraption that curves over the base of the necks of a team and under their necks, against which the force of drawing is exerted by their shoulders.

And Jesus is saying, here, are you heavy-laden?  Clunk.  Sounds odd, doesn’t it?  How does that lighten our load?  Well, two oxen wear that yoke so they can pull and plow more effectively together.  Their load is theoretically cut in half.  Not only does it keep them together, but it also spreads out the burden of whatever it is they’re pulling, the plow or the cart.

In a similar manner, humans can bear their burdens more effectively by working together.

In the Ancient Near East (ANE, shorthand for the time period in which Jesus lived), during the old days of Israel and the Middle East, this mechanism was used on human beings in order to control them as prisoners or slaves.  You’ve probably seen that in the movies too, when actors wore those wooden contraptions with their arms attached to them.  It’s not a pretty image to think of these things in use on humans, even in the early days of our own country.

A yoke was a symbol of control, ownership and service, and early on it became a mark of slavery, which was common.  Marks or brands were also used to identify slaves.  Earrings too, as well as tattoos.  Forced economic or political labor was known as “bearing the yoke,” as Israel bore the yoke of Imperial Rome.  Is that the kind of yoke that Jesus meant?  “Take my yoke upon you.”  I don’t think so.

The Yoke as a Symbol:  You’re Never Alone

So what Jesus really means is that we’re never really alone.  Our heavy burdens can make us think so, but Jesus is right there because we are all connected.  And if we feel that connection, for that’s what the yoke represents, then we know, deep in our soul, that we’re never alone.  We’re all here to help carry each other’s burdens.

And that’s why our last two hymns today are “Abide with Me” (you’re right here with me) and “Blest Be the Tie That Binds.”  Take my yoke upon you, and there you will find rest for your soul.  What kind of rest is that?  It’s not just putting our feet up, is it?  Not the kind we get from lying on a beach in Hawaii.  But it’s the kind of rest we feel inside, no matter what is going on in our lives.  The knowledge, the sure knowledge that all will be well and we that have nothing to fear.  We are never, never alone.

So “Come to me all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest,” says Jesus.  “You will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Amen.

A MOVEABLE FEAST

A Sermon by the Rev. Janet L. Abel
Preached on Pentecost Sunday, June 8, 2014

 

Happy Pentecost!

This is one of our three big church holidays.  But does it really feel that way?  Christmas and Easter and Pentecost.  However, we really don’t do much for Pentecost.  There’s a hint of red out there in the congregation.  That’s one of the ways we say it’s Pentecost.  No Pentecost trees, no Pentecost gifts, and that’s probably a good thing.

It’s a holiday weekend, but there’s no need to rush home and put the ham in the oven or make sure everything is decorated.  Christmas is a lot of work.  I love it.  It’s my favorite time of the year, even though it’s work.  And Easter is glorious, but once again there’s some effort involved, not to mention that we get up very early for the sunrise service.

I really enjoy Pentecost and what it celebrates.  The Holy Spirit.  As mysterious as that can be, this is a celebration.  The church’s birthday is on this day.  The people gathered together, and they became one.  That is certainly something to celebrate.  It is a Moveable Feast because the date changes every year.  Some years we agree with the Orthodox churches, and this is one of those years when our Easter and Pentecost fall on the same days as theirs.  So why does it move?  We’ll be getting to that.

My Priest Has Never Told Me That!

A while ago, I worked with a lady who is a resident at St. Louise Manor, where I am on the staff.  She tried out my Bible Study group that meets there on Thursday mornings.  One day we got into a discussion about how Easter is fixed and why that date is so moveable.  Christmas is always on December 25^th, but it moves around the days of the week, although the date always remains the same.

You’ll notice, however, that there’s a huge spread in the different dates when Easter is celebrated.  The dates can fall a month or more apart because of the way the specific date was decided long ago.  Over the centuries, the church fathers have called enormous councils to decide important religious matters.

All right, then, this is orthodox; this is what we’re all going to believe.  Because the dates are so spread out, and there’s no such thing as the printed word, we’re trying to get uniform dates down on paper.  (They didn’t yet have printing presses.)  People are disagreeing with each other.  They’re running around in all directions.  So we’re going to call these councils and get everybody on the same page.

One of those pages was to fix the date of Easter inasmuch as it was being celebrated all over the calendar.  Some people were celebrating it every week, and that was just too much.  But because Pentecost depends on Easter, how was Easter decided?  The church fathers decided to place it on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.  This is a perfectly natural reason:  To celebrate new life after the first day of spring.

Well, my lady, who still resides at the St. Louise Manor, didn’t enjoy hearing this.  She took off her glasses and screeched, “My priest has never told me that!  You’re lying!”  And I said, “I’m so sorry I’m upsetting you, but this is the real reason.  Have you ever thought about why Easter . . . .”  “No, I’ve never thought!  I don’t question God!”  She was furious.  I’ll never forget it.  She hasn’t really spoken to me since, and it’s about three years now.

Some people have problems with their memory, but not this lady.  Oh no.  She’s the one who said Easter moves around.  And it’s got to do with the first day of spring, which sounds like goddess worship or something.  So she doesn’t come to Bible Study any more, as you can imagine.  What does that say about her faith?

If it moves, it’s not stable, is it?  It’s not believable.  It’s too human.  Yet I love the fact that the date of Pentecost moves.  Pentecost is based on Easter, 50 days afterward.  And because Easter moves, because spring moves, because the full moon moves, so does Pentecost.  They all move around.

What Is Pentecost?

Let’s look at our Bible story a little more.  What happened here?  After Jesus ascends into heaven, the disciples are told to wait, and angels are there, looking up to heaven.  There goes Jesus, now what do we do?  The angels say, go back to Jerusalem and wait, and they did.

Ten days later, they’re all gathered together, and more people are obviously joining in.  There are a lot of people here, men and women, including Mary, and certainly more than 12 disciples, or 11 in this case.  There’s a multitude, the Bible says.

Then something major happened.  Hard to describe, but the Bible uses words as though it were like wind, a mighty wind that filled the whole house.  It was like fire, but not exactly, and it rested on each person.  Everybody started to talk.  The language was confused, but all understood that they were one.  And there were many symbols.  Wind and something like fire and words and languages from all over the earth, and yet there was understanding.  These were all symbols of the Holy Spirit, and now the church could truly be born.

There are many images for God used all the time.  A lot of them are from the Bible.  Last Wednesday, reading from The Jewish Annotated New Testament, we looked at some central symbols used for God.  “Handles” as Deb said in the children’s message, God’s big.  You can get a handle on it, you can get a piece of it:  Yahweh, Jehovah, Father, Mother, Abba, Breath, Spirit, Wind, Fire.

Also, the Holy Breath, Ruach in Hebrew, Wisdom from Proverbs.  Holy Wisdom is pictured as being with God at the Creation.  In John, the author picks up that thread in the prologue to his Gospel, which begins very differently from the other three Gospels:  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  Another image, the spoken word, and then John goes on to say that in Creation, God spoke, and the world began.  These images are helpers.  Somehow, God, one God, is understood and experienced in many different ways.

The Word Dwells Among Us, Filled with Wind and Fire

That’s what Pentecost celebrates.  Then John says in his prologue, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, filled with grace and truth.”  These images are used in our Pentecost story in something like fire and words in a speech, different languages becoming one.  Each image speaks a little differently about what the spirit is and how we might experience it.  I’ve used wind a lot to talk about God’s spirit in and among us.  Wind is something you don’t see, but it’s everywhere.

Have any of you ever gone on line to the Google Wind Map?  Up comes an outline of the United States, showing all the winds, how strong they are, and colored lines that get brighter while they’re moving.  It’s such a cool picture.  You see why our Midwest has so many more problems with wind than we do here in the East.  Nothing’s stopping that wind coming down from Canada, which is much stronger as shown by its patterns.

I looked at the Wind Map the day tornados were spinning in the Midwest, and you could see them.  Go to the East, and we have much gentler winds blowing across New York State and the eastern seaboard.  Look it up on a day of storm, and you’ll really see it.  You can’t see wind, but you can certainly see what it does if you watch television news.  You can see flags flapping; you can see trees and branches down and whole houses uprooted.  It can get pretty powerful and sometimes scary, as in a storm at night.

God’s spirit can be like that.  It can be like fire, warm to the touch, moving, passionate.  And God’s spirit can certainly be like words.  We use words a great deal in our church services whenever we gather.  We read words in our books, we hear the Word, we sing, we pray.  And notice the different languages becoming one.  There are all these languages, Parthians and Medes, and yet they all understand.  Understanding.  Connection.  And the Holy Spirit is everywhere.  It’s moving all the time, which is why it’s great.  Because Pentecost is a holiday that moves like Easter.  New life moves too.

But what does that say about our faith?  If it moves, are we like the lady at St. Louise?  It’s not stable.  It’s not believable.  It’s too human.

My Theology Is Dangerous; the Holy Spirit Is in Too Many Places

A long time ago, I went to seminary.  Not as long ago as Art, but we went to the same place, and I was there after him, ’92 to ’95.  I decided right in the middle of the three-year Master’s program that I would take the Presbyterian ordination exam in my second year rather than the third year.  Presbyterians have to take what they call ordination exams.  I should have skipped to the UCC right then and there.

But of course the Presbyterians believe in tests, and they are very hard tests.  They’re like the LSAT and the medical boards, so they’re similar to a board, a really difficult thing that must be passed.  It’s not so much that it’s hard, but you have to kind of agree with the party line.

Despite not having been raised Presbyterian and thus not really indoctrinated in Presbyterian theology, I nevertheless decided to take my theological board a year early.  So I took that test and guess what.  The essay was about the Holy Spirit.  Uh, oh.  When I got it back, I have to tell you with some embarrassment that, although it was a great lesson, I had failed it.

I had never failed anything this important.  But I failed logic in college; that was a big mystery to me.  And some of my labs.  I hated chem lab.  Anyway, I failed the Presbyterian ordination exam and was shocked and chagrined.  One’s ordination rides on this.  I had a whole year more, but I sat on the steps just crushed.

And I have to tell you one of the quotes from my examiner.  Presbyterian ordination exams are sent out across the country to various people who grade them.  The Elder who reviewed my test had scrawled a big remark on the front:  “Well, I am not passing this person.  She puts the Spirit in way too many places, and her theology is dangerous.”

I never forgot that.  I did install the Holy Spirit in too many places.  I put it everywhere.  (But the Holy Spirit did not face me down for my presumption.)  What the Elder was looking for, however, was in the pulpit, in the Bible, in church, and that’s pretty much it.

You know you’re starting to get kind of dangerous if you think the Holy Spirit is just down the street.  It could be anywhere then, right?  In a bar, on a beach, in some other book besides the Bible.  In some other office, in a song, in nature.  How could the Spirit be there?  You’re likely to get into dangerous places that way.  Newton, New-Age philosophies, Paganism, you name it.  So she doesn’t get ordained.

Luckily, I had a whole year to read a book called Christian Doctrine by Shirley Guthrie.  It is a classic about Presbyterian theology.  Since I was raised Baptist, I really needed to steep myself in what the examiners wanted to hear.  And I passed with flying colors, I want you to know.  My very next year, I took all the ordination exams together.

What was the Elder afraid of?  What made my theology dangerous to him or her?  What made this person seem like the lady at St. Louise who doesn’t want to hear that the Spirit could possibly move around, just like Pentecost and Easter.  It’s unstable, unbelievable, and not human.

Theology Hardens, Gets Put in a Box

The history of the Jewish people is instructive.  We learn early on in the Old Testament, in Genesis, that the Jews are worshipping all over the place.  They set up rocks by a river, there by a stream called a wadi, maybe on a mountain because mountains remind people of God, so they go up there to worship.  But then Moses comes along with the people, and they are being driven out of Egypt, out of bondage at last, to go to Israel.

On the way, Moses gets word that he is to build a tent to house the Ark of the Covenant.  This is where the Jews are going to worship.  The tent’s very fancy, all right, and there are a lot of instructions.  I’ve read the Bible a couple of times and found lots of descriptions about the linens and stuff that must be in the tent.  Now what is it about a tent?  Is it in one place?  No, you take it down, and you move it around.  That’s how God’s sanctuaries started.

It was much later that the Temple was built, and that’s where God is.  The Ark of the Covenant is like a throne where God rests, and that’s the holiest place within the Temple.  The mountains where the Samaritans go?  Well, they’re just plain wrong!  How could God be there when Solomon built this beautiful Temple?  It’s something you do, isn’t it?

When Christianity became legal in 313 A.D. and Emperor Constantine was converted, what happened to all those places where Christians were meeting with people who were so new they called themselves “The Way”?  They were down there in the catacombs, in caves, in people’s houses.  Baptismal fonts have been found in regular houses.

What happened to all those places?  They were closed, right?  Churches, big beautiful cathedrals were built.  And that’s where God is.

Sorry, Canon’s Closed; the Age of Prophecy Is Over

It’s the same thing that happens to theology itself.  Over many years, our thinking about God gets hardened, put in a box.  Church councils have been part of that, we’ve got to agree.  We must have one doctrine and one canon.  We’re going to pick this Bible, this is the Holy Bible.  This other stuff, well, does it make it into the Bible?  Canon’s closed.  That’s it.  The Age of Prophecy is over, some have said.  Is the canon closed?

Is there any other book, any book you’ve ever read that speaks to you about God or faith or soul in a real or profound way?  Any person you’ve ever heard speak who has done the same thing for you?  A piece of music that’s moved you and spoken to you of the Divine?  Have you ever been out in nature?

We had a big church meeting in Niagara Falls, Canada, and it’s beautiful there.  I remember once driving into Canada and feeling how arbitrary the border is between the United States and Canada.  Someone put it there, though.  Either it’s a river or a mountain range or something that’s fixed.  Doesn’t move around.  It’s human to do this, but things really do move.

Things are sometimes in very surprising places.

The Mighty Comma

One of my most fundamental reasons to become a UCC pastor is the comma.  It’s simple and profound.  We were quoting Gracie of Burns and Allen, and she said, “Never put a period where God has put a comma.”  So I put on my big Comma pin this morning.  Commas move around.  They’re not stable.  Not always.  As Kim said in Bible Study, commas can save lives.  You know, “Let’seatgrandma.”  Or, Let’s eat,      grandma.”  We’re grateful for that.

Commas are very helpful, but sometimes we’re much more comfortable with periods.  That was then.  The Age of Prophecy is over.  The canon is closed.  But never put a period where God has put a comma.  So we celebrate profoundly on the day we approach the mysterious movement and workings of the Holy Spirit.  God is still speaking.  God moves around.  God is human and in us and among us, still at work in us and the world.

Pentecost is a Moveable Feast, as we are, as the church is, and may it ever be so.

Amen.

FRANCHISING CHRIST

A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Dr. Arthur M. Suggs
On Sunday, April 6, 2014

 

I have attended church all my life.  As a kid, my parents took me to St. Andrews Presbyterian on the northwest side of Indianapolis.  Then as a college student, the first thing I did was to look for a church, found one a few miles outside of town, and attended that for the seven years I was there.  After that, off I went to seminary, where I served two different churches while there, one of which was fascinating, the chapel at Fort Dix, New Jersey.  Then I entered the ministry.

The Decline of the Church Universal

One of the great sadnesses of my life, after fifty to sixty years of being involved with churches, is that the reputation of the Church, not any particular one but the Church universal, has declined over those decades.  Among the causes have been the drop in the number of people who come to church, the scandals that have plagued the church over those years, and the impaired reputation it now has.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been at a cocktail party, meeting new people, and they’ll ask, “What do you do?”  When I reply, “I’m the pastor of a church,” they’ll say, “Oh.”  It’s like they stop themselves before they can say, “I’m so sorry.”  They feel as though they need to send me a card or something.  It’s sad that over the years the reputation has continued to decline.

I was ordained in 1984, and the middle of the 80’s was sort of a formative time for me as a brand-new minister.  I was enthusiastic, idealistic, and optimistic as all get-out.  I was also clueless, with no idea what I was getting into.  And one of the things that has affected me deeply came in 1986, when I’d been a brand-new minister for only two years at that point.

Infidelities in the Church

In 1986 televangelist Jimmy Swaggart began making on-air accusations denigrating other televangelists, notably Marvin Gorman and Jim Bakker.  You might not have heard of Gorman, but he was well-known, and you all remember Jimmy Bakker and Tammy Faye.  I’m not sure how he did this, but Swaggart had uncovered the fact that Gorman had been having an affair with a woman in his congregation.  Swaggart decided to tell about it on his television show.  He also helped to expose Bakker’s infidelity, which actually was arranged by a colleague.  It was a sting operation when Bakker was out of town.  These exposures, you will remember, received unbelievable media attention.

Gorman retaliated in kind – now these are Christian ministers, mind you – by hiring a private investigator to look at Swaggart’s life and found out that he had been using prostitutes.  Swaggart was subsequently forced to step down from his pulpit, only for a year, and he made a tearful televised apology in February 1988.  And I quote; it’s a great quote.  This guy’s good.  “I have sinned against you, my Lord, and I would ask that your precious blood would wash and cleanse every stain until it is in the seas of God’s forgiveness.”  Gosh, what I wouldn’t give to have that kind of talent.  Forgiveness comes when you apologize, I suppose.

Swaggart was caught again by California police in 1991, only three years later, with another prostitute.  Her name was Rosemary Garcia, riding with him in the car when they got pulled over because they were going the wrong way down a one-way road.  The cop asked why she was with Jimmy Swaggart, and she replied, “He asked me for sex.  I mean that’s why he stopped me.  That’s what I do.  I’m a prostitute.”  So this happened during my formative years, and I guess I’ve been damaged ever since.

Abuses of Charitable Funds

All this came bubbling back up for me last week, when I heard a story on the radio.  NPR was telling about a ministry, which it called a “church” in quotation marks.  I’m not sure if it really is a church or not.  But it is some type of ministry that over the last two to two-and-a-half years has brought in $210,000,000 in donations and out of that has given away $30,000,000 to all sorts of ministries, relief efforts,  and various projects.

This ministry has nonprofit status because it is technically a “church.”  But bear in mind, it has no sanctuary, no congregation that fills it up, no weddings, no funerals, and no baptisms.  There’s no fellowship dinner, no popcorn for the local parades, no hospital calls, no nursing-home visits.  Just a studio that promotes beautifully what this ministry has done with the $30,000,000.  No doubt it can do a lot of good with $30,000,000, but you’re never told about the full $210,000,000 and how, with generous contributions, it could do so much more.

I’m so mad about this abuse of charitable funds that I can hardly stand it.  I can scarcely see straight, and I almost have to pull to the side of the road because I’m so upset.  I’m thinking the same thing you’re thinking.  What about the $180,000,000 remainder?  What happened to that?

Searching for God in the High and Low Places

Sometimes I skip church completely when on vacation.  It’s as though I’ve had it with church.  But other times I attend to different religious needs that I have.  I like the way we do church here.  But there’s a twin impulse that I like to satisfy when on vacation.  One is that I often go to an Anglican church, an Episcopal church, where there’s a procession and every single word said from the pulpit is being read.  It’s been preprinted, the sermon is read, the liturgy is read, and it’s all very well organized.  Very high-church.  I like that now and then, once a year.

And then I’ll also go to the other extreme by attending an Assembly of God church, a Pentacostal sect.  I wave my hand, praise Jesus, and get that kind of thing out of my system.

The Hidden Secret of Megachurches

Once, while on vacation, I went to a megachurch.  It was a smallish megachurch, with only 700 or 800 people, but still a megachurch.  And what an experience that was!  The music was awesome – somewhere between 40 and 50 voices, good voices, and they sang beautiful anthems.  On multiple screens, the words of the anthems showed up in video.  Along with beautiful scenery, panoramic views, and with the words of the anthem came the experience of not just listening to and seeing the choir but also beautiful images and highlighted words.

Then came what we would call a Minute for Mission.  It was an extremely professional Power Point presentation about one of the ministries that this church promotes.  Once again there were different images that went with this very proficient talk that the Minute for Mission person put on.

Finally came the sermon.  Now I care about sermons.  I pay attention to them.  They’re part of my business.  So I listened to this sermon very closely and found it almost perfect technically.  Never a misspoken word, never an “uh” anywhere in it.  The theology was exactly what you would expect – 100 percent orthodox evangelical Christianity, which is that you are going to Hell.  But there’s Jesus.  If you believe in Jesus as your lord and savior, you’re in luck.  You don’t go to Hell, and you can then have a better life.  So the minister highly recommends calling Jesus into your life as lord and savior.

So that was the gospel message, but I detected something vaguely unsettling in the sermon.  It occurred to me there was nothing in it that had to do with this particular congregation and nothing that had to do with this particular minister.  I noticed it but didn’t go down that road.  So I left the service with an overriding feeling of envy.  Good grief!  The time it takes to put together and rehearse a technically perfect sermon, the time it takes to put together a Minute for Mission, the time it takes to integrate the anthem music and several other pieces of music with the message.  All this must be a prodigious undertaking, so I felt envious.

How do they pull it off?  It was later that I found out how, and boy, did I feel stupid.  Many megachurches subscribe to a DVD service.  They are part of a franchise.  You pay a fee to a company that provides music for the anthem a month or two ahead of time.  You get the music to the choir.  It comes with the text for the Minute for Mission and the Power Point to accompany it, so all you have to do is play that and find a well-spoken person to deliver the text in a compelling way while the video shows.

Exactly the same thing for the sermon.  The sermon is there in the DVD.  Print it, and the minister reads it ten, twenty times, and practices the text three, six, nine times until the sermon is down pat, almost memorized.  The minister is then able to deliver it convincingly without having to write it, research it, or integrate it with the Minute for Mission or the music.  The megachurch is thus a franchise.  It is told what to say.

Now, why have I told you this?  These are some of the big, successful church stories that are going on in our world right now.

Searching for God in Our Home Church

So I thought you’d like to know what you get here at our church.  This is where it’s important.  What you get is crystal-clear finances.  There is not a dime hidden anywhere in this church, unless it’s underneath one of those pew cushions.  You want to know where your money goes?  Just ask.  All the money that comes in and where it goes is significant.  Every single facet of our church’s finances is available 100 percent to every single person in this church.  We don’t always print it up for everybody because we’re trying to save a few trees, but it’s all available.  As to your Mission dollars, when you give a dollar, one dollar goes where you want it to go.  Not 99 cents, not 95 cents, not 50 cents.  A dollar.

Because the church pays for all of the overhead, your donations follow your wishes.  Have we made mistakes before?  Yes, but they have been corrected, and your intended beneficiary receives all of your allocation to it.

The sermons you get here – some are good; some are not so good.  I’ve seen yawns like you wouldn’t believe.  Big, contagious yawns!  But the sermons are real, they are born out of the life of this congregation and this minister, integrated into the gospel of Jesus Christ and the news of our day.

Another thing you get in this church is that, should you decide to kick the bucket, you will be buried by somebody who knows you and will strive mightily to say something good about you.  And your friends and family who attend your service will not have to endure an evangelistic message to a captive audience, which is one of the most immoral things that churches can do.

The last accounting of what you get here is not 100 percent true, but it’s mostly true.  And that is “Cheers.”  Like the TV show, this is a place where everybody knows your name.  It’s an extended family such that, when something really bad happens in your life, there are others who are there for you, like a deep bench, waiting to cry with you.  And if something really good happens in your life, they’re there to rejoice with you.

Fallacies and New Understandings About God

So that’s what you get, but actually that’s what anybody gets if they’re part of a reasonably healthy church.  And here’s something else you get, a kind of value added in addition to all the other stuff.  And that is you get a “God is still speaking” message.  What God is saying lately, integrated with what God has been saying in the past.  Part of what bothers me about the standard evangelical communication that you sometimes get at funerals is that the megachurch message is based upon suppositions that aren’t true.  Let me air a little dirty laundry here.  There are five fallacies about God:

1. God needs something, as in God needs your obedience and your worship.

2.   God can fail to get what he/she needs.  So if you’re not obedient and you don’t worship right, God is sort of upset.

3.   God has separated you from God’s self because you haven’t given what God wants.  The Deity can’t tolerate sin, can’t be in the presence of sin, so God has separated himself/herself from the sinner.

4.   God still needs what God needed so badly all along, your obedience and your worship.

5.   God still requires obedience and worship from your separated position and will destroy you if you don’t provide it.

All five on this list are false.  All five are the basis of negative messages from many pulpits.

Reexamining Old Beliefs in the 21^st Century

Let me give you another example of the kind of thing that God is saying of late:  God has been encouraging people all across the globe to reexamine some of our old beliefs, to entertain the notion, to permit ourselves to think that maybe what we have believed about God and life isn’t working and may not even be right.  God may be asking us to explore the possibility that there might be something we haven’t understood about the Deity.  Maybe we got something wrong about God and life, the understanding of which could really change things.

And then we must be willing to accept a new understanding of God and life to be brought forth, reluctantly and with much criticism, but nevertheless an understanding that could produce a new way of life on this planet without wars and intrareligion hatred.  We must be courageous enough to explore and examine new understandings.  If they align with our inner truth, our inner understanding, our inner knowing, we must have the fortitude to enlarge our belief system to include these new understandings.

Finally we must choose to live life as a demonstration of our highest and grandest beliefs rather than being in denial of them.

This, my friends, is new.  It’s of this century.  The Book of Hebrews says, “Forsake not the assembling of yourselves.”  Ministers have used that exhortation for centuries to encourage people to come to church.  Here’s why:  In the assembly, in the community, when you gather together, that’s where the healing takes place, that’s where the growth takes place.  We believe the image is so compelling that you can take all these rough stones, every single one of us, put them in a tumbler, and they come out polished.

Amen.

 

ROCKS, WATER, TIGERS, AND MICE

A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Dr. Arthur M. Suggs
On Sunday, March 23, 2014

Moses Strikes Water

We have just heard a reading from Exodus 17.  It’s a beloved story, near the middle of the entire Exodus chronicle, in which the children of Israel are wandering in the wilderness, and they begin complaining because they are thirsty.  That’s understandable, I suppose.  If you were wandering in a desert and with you were women, children, old people, and a lot of baggage, of course you would get thirsty.  So Moses strikes the rock at Horeb with his staff, and out comes water.  The people are saved once again.

This story works on a number of levels.  It works as a basic narrative in that you’ve got a really strong bad guy, the antagonist in the person of the pharaoh, with his people and the army chasing the Israelites.  And you’ve got a really good guy in that Moses is powerful.  He’s got great connections.  But he’s also flawed.  It’s a compelling saga that holds your attention and your interest in what happens to the people.

The epic also works beyond basic narrative at the magical level.  Supernatural, mysterious things are going on.  Moses’ staff will be used to save the people from poisonous snakes, and he used it to free the people from Egypt.  You might envision Charlton Heston in his flowing robes holding the staff, or you might picture Gandolph and the way he’s constantly saving the Fellowship with his staff.

Go Deeper, to the Archetype

But I would ask you this morning to go down yet one more layer to the archetypal level.  There’s some deep symbolism going on here, the opposites of desert wilderness and water.  There’s an old expression of being caught between a rock and a hard place.  Well, a desert is a hard place full of rocks.  It’s both.  It’s hard, it’s dry, it’s unforgiving, and it can be deadly.  Traveling through the desert can be dangerous and burdensome.  Water is crucially important.  It symbolizes the opposite – softness, life, refreshment, coolness, growth – all made possible by water in an unforgiving environment such as a desert.

Coming into this archetypal setting, travelers encounter the opposites of the danger of the dry desert and the need for water to stay alive as they pass through it.  In the context of this story and as multiplied by others, we get a take-home message not only from this vignette but also from the whole story of the Exodus:  It is that God sees, God hears their complaints and prayers, and God cares.  God can solve any problem.

If you’re a bunch of slaves, unarmed, burdened with baggage, cattle, old people, children, and you’re fleeing an army on horseback and in chariots, you’re in quite a pickle.  Yet God saw, heard, cared, and delivered them.  Saved them by parting the Red Sea, or the Sea of Reeds.  Now you are in the desert, and you’re in trouble again.  God sees, hears, cares, and delivers the Israelites yet again.  Moses, hit that rock with your staff!  And out comes water, miraculously.

The take-home message?  If God can solve those two dilemmas, God can solve any problem.

Can You Really Take That Message Home?

Hold on just a minute.  Is the take-home message really true?  Is it believable?  Are you convinced?  Are you persuaded so far that God solves such problems?

Let me give you four contrary examples:

1.  What about a 48-year-old middle manager who lost his job in 2008, right at the beginning of the economic downturn, and has been chronically unemployed or underemployed ever since?  About two years after he lost his job, the marriage started to fall apart.  They had to sell their car and get a cheaper one.  They had to sell their house and move into a less-expensive place.  They had two kids, who continued to grow up.

Eventually the marriage dissolved.  He still can’t find work, and – this is probably the part that hurts the most – his two kids view him as a loser.  Several years have passed, and he’s now in his mid-fifties, that stressful time of trying to find a career-level job.  So he gets by on a McJob and his heart is broken.  He loved his wife, and he loves his children, all of whom don’t think very much about him.

2.  Or what about the parents of a teenager who seems hell-bent on trouble.  We’ve all known this kind of teenager.  Some kids are like that, rebellious and anti-authority to their very core.  Much more interested in drugs, sex, or alcohol, completely at the expense of school and studying.  Totally opposed to a job, making some money, saving for college.  Wholly against any delayed gratification.  The parents are worried, really worried.  Deep inside, they’re not sure that this kid is going to be okay, that he’ll end up someplace bad.  And they worry.

3.  Or fathers of preschool children.  Think of a single parent who lost his wife, their mother, to breast cancer while she was in her thirties.  I’ve known three of these fathers in my time, all with similar stories.  And for all three there is a hardness, a bitterness in their hearts.

4.   Finally, consider a case of the second wife.  A man marries young, and it’s not a good marriage.  It lasts only a few years.  Then, after the divorce, he’s single for a time until he meets a new person who is much better-suited for him, a much better marriage.  They end up being married for nearly thirty-five years when he has a very sudden heart attack and is gone before anybody knew what had happened.  Next, after the funeral when the second wife starts dealing with all the affairs of having lost a husband, she discovers that he never changed his will.

 This is one of those old-fashioned families, in which the house was completely in the man’s name.  Both cars the same.  The investment accounts, the retirement accounts, yes, all in his name.  A phone call is made, and the original wife from thirty-five years ago is finally found and informed that she has just inherited quite a bit.  I’ve known two of these second wives to whom this has happened.  They experienced sadness and bitterness and anger – serious anger that has settled into the hearts and minds and souls of those two women.

Now think about these four examples:  a 48-year-old middle manager whose kids think he’s a loser, the parents of a hell-bent teenager, the fathers of preschool children who are suddenly motherless, and two bereaved and bereft second wives.  Do you tell these people the story about Moses striking the rock in the wilderness and out comes water?  Do you tell them that God can solve any problem?  Would you tell them that?  Would you look them in the eyes and say, God sees, hears, and cares?  God can solve any problem?  What would be their response to you?

Now I’ve Painted Myself into a Corner

Which is it?  God sees, hears, and cares, can solve any problem?  Or is there really an inherent sadness, bitterness, anger in our world?  Is there any resolution between these two poles?

Relevant to  this predicament, I would like to read you a story.  It’s very simple, Zen in nature.  For years I have enjoyed reading yarns from two different religious traditions, Hasidic and Zen.  Even though I relish them, I’m often disappointed.  Sometimes they purport to be deep and meaningful, but I just don’t get it.  They may seem rather silly or shallow instead.  However, I enjoy reading them, and I came across one that is in my opinion one of the deepest stories I’ve ever come across.  It didn’t appear that way to me at first, and it probably won’t seem that way to you at first, either.  But once I started looking into the tale, I began to get it.  It’s called The Parable of the Strawberry:

A man was wandering in the wilderness when a tiger appeared and began to chase him.  Panicked, the man fled and came to the edge of a cliff, with this ferocious tiger on his heels.  Spotting a thorny vine rooted on a rock, he swung himself down over the chasm.  Above, the tiger roared and pawed at the rock.  And then, looking down, he saw the gaping jaws of a second tiger, pacing below him.  Apparently these two worked as a team, and he didn’t know it.

Looking up at the first tiger, looking down at the second, the man noticed suddenly a white mouse and a black mouse that had appeared and had begun to gnaw away at the vine.  But the man did not care.  He no longer paid attention to the two tigers or the two mice for he had found a plump red strawberry growing on the face of the cliff.  Holding onto the vine with one hand, he plucked the fruit with the other and popped it into his dry mouth.  Oh, how sweet it was.

That’s the end of the story.  I came across it in a Zen children’s book, and believe it or not, it’s also a pop-up book.  As you open and close the page, you can see the man on the vine with the tiger below jumping up and the tiger above trying to reach down to get him.  I’m not sure how advisable this book really is for small children, to be honest with you.  Anyway, there it is.  An ancient story, well over two millennia old.

Here’s an Interpretation of the Parable

The tigers.  The first tiger that began to chase the man represents the problems of your youth, of your childhood, if you remember those times.  For example, when you had a crush on one of the other students in class your heart was broken for the first time in your life.  Or if you were at all like me, I was a mouthy kid and got myself in trouble.  And I got myself beat up or sent to detention multiple times in my school career.  Or dealing with your parents, those “stupid” parents every kid has.

The tiger below, into whose jaws the man will fall, represents the problems of your old age.  Feebleness, failing memory, all sorts of ways in which your body begins to let you down.  Being in the hospital, needing surgery, falling and breaking a hip.  Then you can’t remember things, and it seems as though sometimes the only correspondence you get is information about some old friend who has died.  Not always golden years for some elderly people.

Then the two mice, one white and one black.  There is something typically Zen about the story in that the white mouse represents the good things, but  the “good” things that happen to us, according to Zen tradition, aren’t always so good.  For example, a man gets a promotion and a raise, and now he is further entrapped by a job that’s not so good for him.  But now that he’s got a promotion and a raise, it’s all the more difficult to leave the job and make a change in his life.

The black mouse represents the bad things that can happen in our lives.  But again, in the Zen tradition, “bad” might not necessarily be so bad.  Like the famous story of the young man who fell off a horse and broke his leg.  That would be bad, except that two days later the army came through conscripting all the young men to go away to war, but they didn’t take him because he had a broken leg.  So what’s bad and what’s good isn’t always so clear, and that’s why both mice are gnawing away at the man’s vine.

So What’s It All Mean, Man?

Here’s a deeper explication of the story:  Hanging on that vine is the predicament of every human being.  And for every single one of us, in front of our face is a strawberry.  There is no interpretation for the strawberry because what it means is what it means to you.  The strawberry represents the desire of your heart, the longing of your soul, and it’s different for every one of us.  You have to decide what the strawberry means to you.

All of us can be distracted by our perils.  Those four examples – the 48-year-old middle manager, the parents of the teenager, the father of the preschool kids, the second wives – those four were very much distracted by the tiger above and the tiger below and the two mice chewing on the vine.  They were so distracted that they probably never saw the strawberry in front of their faces.

And the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness?  Yes.  They were definitely distracted by the tigers and the mice, complaining as they went and not seeing the strawberries along the path.  All of us can be distracted by our perils.  The two tigers and the two mice are the common lot of all humanity.  But so is the strawberry.

Amen.