My Favorite Scriptures & Last Thoughts (at Indiantown Presbyterian Church) 7/21/19

MY FAVORITE SCRIPTURES & LAST THOUGHTS

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

July 21, 2019   Last Sermon at Indiantown Presbyterian Church

            I wanted our last Sunday together to be something rather different, so after some consideration, I decided to share some of my favorite prayers, songs and Scriptures today.                   

            At a presbytery meeting back in MO, I was tasked with presenting a man who was retiring, and I was to ask him one question before all his friends began to speak.  He looked a little nervous as I called him forward, but as I asked my question his face broke out in a big smile.  I asked him, “Is there a special Scripture that has stayed with you and been important in your spiritual life over the years? “  His answer was ready on his lips before I finished asking. 

I like to ask about people’s spiritual lives.  Sometimes I’ve asked new pastors moving into our presbyteries, when we get to ask questions,  What is something that their prayer life is working on in their hearts now?  See, I believe faith is a life-long journey, and there’s always something percolating, always as edge, always a growth happening.  And not just for preachers - for anyone with a vital spiritual life. 

So in hopes that it will spark some reflection in each of us here, I'm sharing some of my memories, and scriptures, that moved along my own faith journey with God.  In a recent article by Barbara Brown Taylor, she mentions a Sunday School song that captured her imagination as a young person, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world.  Red, brown, yellow, black and white, they are precious in God’s sight.  Jesus loves the little children of the world.” She credits that song with giving a foundation for her anti-racism work as an adult.  See, sometimes certain teachings hit fertile soil; like Jesus’ parable, sometimes the seeds fall on good soil & stick with us.

Philippians 2:13    

If I were asked that same question as I asked that retiring man, my verse would be Philippians 2:13, where the apostle Paul tells those early disciples at Philippi that its God who is at work in them, enabling them to both will and to work for God’s good pleasure.  Its not a verse many people memorize, yet the Holy Spirit spoke to me as a teenager with those words, reassuring me that even the desire to do what God asks, even the will to do it, shows that God is alive and working in me - and in us.  See, I have always had almost impossibly high standards for myself.  What I took in from my home church was a fear-based faith, where God was watching and counting and ready to judge and punish.  Obedience was expected, and disobedience was punished.  I was determined to be a very good girl and avoid punishments, of which I was afraid, as it was often severe.  Yes, I heard the words about mercy and grace in church, but that only meant that God had provided a way for me to not go to hell, if I would accept it and live right.  I didn’t know much about forgiveness except it was necessary to go to heaven.  So I rather overdid things in the fearful  obedience quarter, searching out minutiae to follow punctiliously.  I was upset that I couldn’t keep all of my good intentions like praying constantly or even getting up early to have my devotion time.  I didn’t like everybody, either, although I tried to see the best in them.  So I was constantly tied up in knots of fear in my insides.  

Reading this verse, that said even the will to please God was evidence of God working in me, was so reassuring.  It was mercy and grace that God was okay with me even when my goals fell short of achievement.  It was forgiveness for when I thought I fell short.  I could relax and breathe.  When I later read about Martin Luther’s almost obsessive confession of minutiae, and the relief he found when the words hit him that salvation was given by grace through faith, I understood.  According to the story, he was mounting up steps to a shrine, and doing it on his knees, when the words hit him, and he stood up and went back down - no need for all the supererogatory works - salvation was by faith. (Although I do like the book of James, which Luther wanted removed from the Bible…)  

This verse remains among my most treasured Scriptures.  I still desire deep in my heart that my life be pleasing to God, and that I continue to learn to live in the kindom of God and show it to the world - and at the same time, its not fear-based, because I will fall short most of the time. 

Galatians 3:28

            I preached on Galatians 3:28 a few weeks ago, the Scripture where Paul waxes eloquent about how in Christ we are all new creations, and writes, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”  Its a manifesto of the radical equality of worth of all people, in the eyes of God.  When we come to Christ and become a part of that new creation, that new body of Christ called the church, things that used to divide us disappear, as we are all now one in Christ Jesus.  Everyone counts, no type of person is higher or better or more important.  I spoke in that sermon about how this Scripture became the reason I found the courage to attend seminary, albeit I was provisional, telling myself that if these Presbyterians were too weird, and their theology too different, I could always leave.  Instead I felt like that ugly duckling in the story, who finally found her place, and rejoiced. 

            It was this scripture that the Holy Spirit used in my heart to make me realize how broad God’s love was, and how it encompassed the whole of humanity.  I mean, I’d always thought that God came for the world, I just never fleshed out what that might look like in dealing with different groups of peoples.  My home church sent mission workers around the world so other countries could hear about Jesus; it just never occurred to me that then they would be my equal.

            I grew up in and near Washington DC, and was there in the time of the Poor People’s campaign, and the angry riots that tore through town as repressed peoples began to feel their own anger at the injustices.  We got the Washington Post, and it was on our nightly news, when Martin Luther King Jr was shot, and later the Kennedys.   My parents and their friends were not overtly bigots, they just were okay with treating people differently if we were nice about it…. I guess my initial application of this scriptural equality was racism; then later I saw the implications were there also about genders.  My awareness of the radical extent of the apostle Paul’s vision was gradual; and the verse continues to be a cornerstone in my theological ponderings.

 

Hebrews 11:8-9

            The story of Abraham and Sarah being told by God to leave their land and go to a place God would show them is a story from way, way back in our faith ancestry.  Its what began the whole story of the Jewish people, with God’s covenants and promises, and deep metaphors of wandering in deserts, holy mountains, ten commandments, and Promised Land.  In the book of Hebrews, in chapter 11, which we call the “faith chapter,” Abraham and Sarah start the list of those who showed faith - “By faith Abraham (and Sarah - I always add her) obeyed when they were called to set out, not knowing where they were going.”  The writer of this letter to the Hebrews says that this obeying is the essence of faith - they believed God, and it was counted to them at righteousness.  Even thousands of years before Jesus. 

            One of my early sermons was titled “To Set Out Not Knowing,” because that phrase captivated me.  I imagined Abraham getting his household ready and leaving his homeland, going out into who knows what, just because God said to.  I mean, I like to know the destination, and I like maps - or, to be more up-to-date, I like gps and map apps.  I’ve eventually learned to like wandering, and surprises, and being more laid back, but I was an uptight young person - control was a big thing.  I like plans, and I like for them to work out.  Usually I had backup plans B and C as well.  It frustrated me no end when D or E happened, and I was not prepared.  One of my favorite lines in the movie Ordinary People was when the therapist says to the client, “Control is gonna cost you extra.”  Like his client, I didn’t like the way life could change with one phone call from the doctor, a knock on the door at night, an accident that could change the course of one’s life in a second.  I didn’t like the insecurity of feeling that I was not in charge, that my plans didn’t necessarily work, that things happen to people.  That we can do the right things, set everything up well, and BOOM - a hurricane blows through and my security disappears as the illusion it really was. 

            Because in life, we always “set out not knowing,” just like Abraham and Sarah.  Who knows at the start of college what is actually going to happen to us in those 4 years, and the different person we will be afterwards?  Who gets married knowing what the years will bring?  Who has kids knowing how its all going to turn out?  We might think we do, we might make plans and head certain directions, which is good, but they aren’t ever written in stone.

 None of us really know where our faith journey with God will take us, either.  Our assurance has to rest on the continuing presence of God despite what happens along the way.  Our trust has to be that God is with us, and will see us through.  I often try and picture my 18 year-old self meeting my 65 year-old self….. My 18 year old self would think I was a heathen, and pray for me with deep concern  to get right with God!  My early self simply could not imagine the path God has taken me on. 

Well, there are lots more Scriptures I could talk about, and I could go on at length, but we all want to get to the River Days party…. So I’ll close with Luke 1:38….

Luke 1:38

            Many of my clergywomen colleagues looked into the Bible for stories about women, and what is told of women in the history of our faith ancestors.  Most of us didn’t know what to do with the picture of Mary, a woman central to the gospel story of Jesus, because we’d grown up with a certain view of her in our patriarchal churches.  She was held up as the epitome of the subservient virgin, the “good” version of being female, versus the, ah I’ll choose the word 'promiscuous' and 'carnal' version of being female.  Girls were exhorted to be like Mary and not like those pushy feminists who were anti-family and godless.  All those negative projections thrown onto a woman who didn’t fit the subservient and virgin stereotype!    

Mary had to be re-examined with my new eyes.  I had an additional problem with Mary, as my upbringing was so virulently anti-Roman Catholic, where we were told people actually prayed to Mary! and other saints! as if she were God!  Clergywomen set out to rework our understanding of Mary, who had been interpreted to us out of a culture that wanted to prove its understanding of women as inferior, or who knew their place. 

One Christmas I decided to do a sermon about Mary, and the verse in Luke 1 changed my perception of her forever - she says to the angel, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Suddenly I saw her deep and true faith, just like Abraham and Sarah’s faith, that she believed God and simply followed what God asked.  No fighting it, no wrestling with it, no trying to run away from it like the prophet Jonah, no despair over it like the prophet Elijah….  She simply accepted what God said, and dealt with the consequences.  Wow.  She seemed to summarize what I see as faith, to simply accept what God says, and live it.  Would that I could be as believing of what God says!  

There was a parishioner in my WI church named Mary, who was having babies at about the same time I was.  I confided some of my fears to her, about how I would handle it if my baby had problems.  She answered simply, “I figure if God gives me that to deal with, then God will also give me the grace to handle it.”  I was silenced; all my worrying and agitating at not being in control of all this was shown up by her faith.  Who was the minister here???  Its a foundational trust in God to be sufficient, to be present, to be for us.  Then while I was actually in labor with my son who was arriving rather early as far as due dates are concerned, Mary’s presence sat with me - both Marys. That night I learned why Mary has been so important to women through the ages - I thought, flippantly, “Mary did this in a barn.”  I thought more seriously, “I wonder if Mary worried that something might happen to her baby?” Childbirth has always carried risks for both mothers and babies.  I thought about the phrase, “when her time was fulfilled,” as a description of the onset of labor, and I thought about seminary profs trying to explain the difference between chronos time (ie clock & calendar time) and God’s kairos time - ie whenever, when the time is right…. They should’ve used the illustration of labor and delivery.  I wondered who my firstborn child would be and what he might do for the world.  Probably not a lot of women think about theology and scriptural words when they’re in labor…, but I bet we all think about these same issues. 

I’ve continued to like this Mary.  I’ve learned a lot from her.  

Isn’t it interesting how God continues to speak through Scriptures, and to all parts of our lives?  Isn’t it cool the way God’s Spirit makes these ancient Scriptures live again in our hearts?  These kinds of interactions with God through the Scriptures, these kinds of realizations and growths in our human lives - this is something that is available to each of us as we listen, read, ponder and seek.  Its among the ways God speaks to real life and continues to speak in each generation.  The journey of Christian faith is full of surprises, turns, illumination, and grace. As I leave you all here in Indiantown to go minister somewhere else, I leave with you my best prayers and hopes for a flourishing of your spirits and your life in Christ.  AMEN.

Recognizing Our Neighbors 7/14/19 Pentecost 5C

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

RECOGNIZING OUR NEIGHBORS

7/14/19   Pentecost 5C

A preacher asked on a clergy Facebook site, “Did your seminary teach you that Jesus is the Good Samaritan, or that Jesus is the good innkeeper?” The question got a lot of replies, because the common lectionary for this Sunday is what we just read, the parable of the good Samaritan, and many congregations are hearing sermons on it today!!!.  Some answerers noted that interpretation of the parables has become a lot more fluid these days, and that most interpreters have moved beyond assigning each element of the story a particular meaning (ie the allegorical method).  Parables are meant to make us think, …reflect, ….and ponder. Where we are in our lives can affect whether we see ourselves as the guy left by the side of the road, beaten up and ignored; OR whether we see ourselves as taking on the role of the good Samaritan because we see suffering all around us, we know what it’s like, and we cannot help but respond; OR perhaps we see ourselves as the innkeeper, caring for people after the immediate crisis is addressed.  Rarely will we immediately see ourselves as the religious bad guys, although at some point we may confess it.  So usually there is no one right interpretation of a parable - the Holy Spirit may move our heart in different ways at different times.   Like I said, it’s kind of fluid.

I thought it might be interesting to share other perspectives of sermons I’ve heard about this parable, from people in other places in their lives and who have come to this text identifying with the various characters  - and so seen other things in this story. 

I heard a man take the perspective that we are like the guy beaten up and left for dead by the things we’ve suffered and endured in the world.  We may be wrecked by our failures in our sins, OR beaten up by the competition for position in power in this world, OR overlooked because of some kind of difference or disability, OR at the end of our ability to cope with a significant loss and grief.  There are surely times when we have each felt this way.  I have - several times, and for different reasons.  Things that happen to us can be devastating, and we can see no way forward.   Then a totally unlikely person says or does something that starts us on our way to healing.  That’s what happened in my own story, when I felt my ministry and life were over, and I was invisible to others, left alone. My sister offered me to come live with her.  We had not had a good relationship since we were teenagers, so I did not expect this kindness from her.  She had an extra room and she offered it, so I had a place to live while I regrouped and recovered. She was my Good Samaritan.  Then I found additional caring people in a local church, who nurtured me and saw good in me yet.  I guess they were the innkeepers for me.  Think for a moment about a time when you were suffering and devastated - who was your Good Samaritan, your innkeepers? 

            Another good sermon I heard emphasized the fact that a person from Samaria, a Samaritan, was not considered a good person by the original hearers of this story.  Those hearers would have been shocked to hear a story where the dreaded Samaritan was actually a good guy - an unexpected person to do a good thing.  A person from Samaria, to the first hearers of Jesus’ story, was a half-caste, a person whose parentage was a mix of Jew and something else - they had intermarried, not kept to their tribe.  I’ve read that after the Korean war, the children fathered by a white American GI with a Korean woman was an outcast there - neither fish nor fowl, not pure.  I imagine that’s been so after other wars as well.  The first interracial children in this country were not accepted well, either. 

            Of course, there are other reasons why certain people would be considered surprising heroes - say, a person who looked like a stereotypical gang member, for example, would be an unlikely helper in our modern version of the story. We’d likely be scared if a person like that stopped to help us when our car broke down - male or female - people of whom our expectations and our stereotyping lead us to see as unlikely to act caringly.  In the same way, people who we would expect to be caring, according to their professions and our stereotypes, cross the street to avoid the man.  A religious professional, for example, we would expect to be caring - but think of the times a battered woman has come to her pastor for help and told that God wants her to go back and submit to her husband.  Think of the children abused by a priest or a pastor.  Criminals use the assumption we make about their niceness and normalcy and okay dress, to take advantage of others all the time. 

            To help us ponder the 2 that passed by, I recalled that in one of my Brother Cadfael mystery novels (by Ellis Peters), there was a murdered pastor who demonstrated this kind of disregard of hurting people.  One event that gave his parishioners reason to dislike him involved a couple with a sick newborn, who came to him to baptize the baby quickly before it died.  But the priest wouldn’t go until he completed his prayer time - and by the time he got there, the child had died.  Then he wouldn’t bury it in the sanctified ground.  He chose his own personal holiness over the needs of this family, which is probably what the two religious folks in the story did, too - on their way to Jerusalem, they were most probably going for religious rituals, and had to stay away from blood and death, which would make them ritually unclean.  Their own religious practices kept them from a compassionate response.

            If we think this is only in stricter religious systems than ours, let me tell you about a pastor in Charleston who told me about a parishioner who objected to their custodian joining the church, saying that he wasn’t like them and should find his own church with others like himself.  I think about the way I am fearful of speaking out about the awful way our sisters and brothers at our country’s borders are being treated, and how it hurts my heart to see the lack of compassion shown to them ---I keep myself from expressing what my heart says in fear that I will be reviled or labeled a radical, and all my Scriptural insights ignored.  I think about the way we are fearful of prison ministries, or of going into rough parts of town. 

A commentator on this passage suggested that the church is to be the innkeepers after God has reached out to those in need, and the Spirit has moved them to seek healing from God.  That is, that the church is where God sends the broken and the suffering, like the Samaritan man left the beaten up guy at the inn, and paid for his care until he came again.  The church is where the healing continues, which may be a pretty good look at the church and our ministry. It asks us to look at the people who come to us in a different way – not to see them as ‘giving units,’ not to look at them as somebody who will bring us some prestige. But rather to see people who come to where churches is God sending them there for the kind of care they need to heal, and therefore asking us to do the work of a healer or provide the work of healing whether we are the healers or not.  See, the innkeeper was a person of business, not necessarily a doctor him or herself. But the Samaritan left enough money and left orders that this person be taken care of until he returned, and the innkeeper could certainly use that money to find the resources that the guy needed. So then the church would be a place of resources for healing, various resources i.e. support for finding addict fighting addictions, support  for turning her life around, support for trying to change bad habits and hurtful attitudes, love and acceptance for those the world rejects and who are tempted to end their lives and suffering.

So there’s a few different takes on that parable.

For myself, this time around I noticed that Jesus doesn’t really answer the lawyer’s question. The lawyer, who is probably a religious scribe, tries to nail Jesus down on this “love your neighbor as yourself” thing, like, how do we get an A+ in neighborliness?  What are the details?  Who exactly do you mean?  What exactly do I need to do to keep this law?  Jesus has just stated that the whole Law of Moses is summed up by “love the Lord your God with all your heart soul mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.”  Its a summary statement about the purpose behind the content of the Law of Moses. This guy, though, wants to nit pick details when Jesus is talking heart attitude and mind attitude.

People today are no different. Rules are an easier way to determine compliance than saying we need to love our neighbors as ourselves.  That’s too nebulous for us sometimes - when we have to determine our own heart and evaluate it.  Just about any church I’ve been in, I’ve had somebody come up to me and ask, “So does God want me to tithe on my net income or my gross income?” Like giving to God is kinda like taxes, with deductions and loopholes. That’s begging the question – in Jesus’ view we give to God because of our love and our gratitude, and because we know that everything we have comes from God in the first place, and there’s no higher good that we can do with the blessings that God has given us. And the idea of a 10th, or a tithe, is a concept from under the law of Moses - and that Law is summed up by Jesus in loving God with our whole being. No details are given.  Some people adopt the concept of a tithe because its measurable - but then it becomes a rule they can argue about.

            People have also asked me, “How many times a month do I have to go to church?” The answer from scripture Old and New Testament together is that we would rather be in the house of the Lord than anywhere else! That gathering to give God praise and worship wherever two or three are gathered together, is pure joy. It can’t be quantified or qualified. The only instruction I recall reading from the New Testament is the challenge to, “forsake not the assembling of yourselves together;” beyond that its not defined either. 

            See, Jesus change the emphasis in his answer - he moves the emphasis from what are called the jots and the tittles of the Hebrew text - which are like the serifs on our type fonts, like what makes Times New Roman look different from Arial, those little teeny decorations on the strokes of a letter.  Those teeny details are not the point, Jesus says - I want your heart transformed by love, by compassion, until you feel the suffering the way God does, and you want to respond as God does. 

Jesus wants to give us a vision of the kindom of God; he wants our imaginations opened to a way to live that God actually intended and desires as best for us, rather than the way we see around us.  Our imaginations have to see beyond what we accept in this world, to the way things could be if we lived into that vision of God’s kindom.  God’s ways and values have to be brought into the messy middle of life here, and not just pushed over on the side for church and Sundays.  (This is based on Bonhoeffer’s writings)

So to get back to our parable! The guy asks his picky question, but Jesus doesn’t give into the temptation to try to define. Instead he tells a story, and at the end of it he asks the lawyer guy to see for himself which one of these acted as a neighbor.  See, Jesus wants us to recognize for ourselves what a neighbor does, and then our own answer will lead us - or convict us, as may be.  Jesus take the question about who is our neighbor, and turns it back on us,  to ask, “Are YOU a neighbor to the hurting and suffering?  What do YOU do when you see the suffering people around you?”

This is a timely question - it probably always is, actually.  It is not a political question except in the sense that all Jesus’ teachings have political implications.  Its inescapable - we can’t preach Jesus without it having implications for our own settings and situations. 

Friends, as believers in God through Jesus Christ, we belong to Christ’s kindom ahead of any national realm - we are citizens of heaven, living out the will of God in a world that is run by various governmental styles.  Consider the current item in the news about all the families and children seeking to make a better life in this country - this parable from 2000 years ago asks us what a neighbor would do when seeing suffering people.  Its not a Democrat, Republican or Independent party thing - its a compassionate neighbor thing. God’s heart is always with the suffering and the wronged. So this parable is a challenge to us - which of those who saw the beaten up guy by the road is the neighbor?  So what are we called to do?  AMEN.

Wisdom Doesn't Necessarily Come From the Top 7/7/19 Pentecost 4C

The Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

Wisdom Doesn’t Necessarily Come From the Top

7/7/19   Pentecost 4C   COMMUNION

This story is about a person from the Top, and 2 persons from near Bottom in a society; a General and 2 slaves; a person who was in good favor with a King and 2 persons who served in his household.  The difference is that the slaves knew the true God and had learned God’s wisdom; and the person who seemed to be smart in the world did not.  Wisdom in this story does not come from the top down; it flowed from near bottom, up. 

It starts with a young Israelite slave girl who was captured in a military raid; taken from her village, her community, & maybe even her family - raiders would take who they could, & weren’t careful to bring whole families. The household where she is a servant is the household of her captor, General Namaan.  The girl is never named.  Although this young girl wasn’t a refugee but a slave, her situation of being separated from her family and in the foreign country of her captors, is similar to stories in the news these past weeks at our very own southern border. And her plight is similar to other young girls and boys stolen by various means who are brought here to serve rich families.  This alone, young, captured girl was put to work waiting on the General’s wife. I don’t know if they spoke the same language, or how onerous her tasks were. It sounds like she was a personal servant, as she had opportunity to speak with her owner.

     Several things about her amaze me. Its amazing to me that she seems to care that the General came out with leprosy. And even more amazing that she is willing to share her memories of her country of birth with her captors.  I don’t get the feeling that she’s bragging, like “MY country has a prophet that can cure that, not like here..”  or being cynical, like “Yeah, too bad (hehehe) he can’t get to the prophet back in MY country!”  I get the feeling she was sincere.  And THAT’s amazing because she has every right to withhold that information from her country’s enemy.  And if she wanted revenge for being stolen and captured and dragged away, withholding that information might feel good.  But no, she evidently has not lost her upbringing in faith, and remains a caring sort of person despite her captivity.

Leprosy was a feared disease, and usually lepers had to live apart from uninfected persons, cast out from those who were ‘clean,’ so to speak.  It doesn’t sound like the General was cast out yet - or else he was keeping it private. The king knew, his wife knew, and the servants he traveled with knew - obviously he wasn’t shunned yet. Many ancient societies had at least palliative treatments for leprosy, but by & large it was a slow disintegration of skin and cartilage & bone - fingers & toes falling off, noses, other parts of the face & body, until the inner organs failed. Unless it healed spontaneously, as it sometimes did, it was eventually fatal. And it was contagious, and so it was feared.

     Evidently Namaan did well for himself in plundering surrounding countries, as he seems to have a good income, house, & slaves etc. He was a Big Deal, he was On Top.  He is important to the King, and has the ear of the king, and the favor of the king. His King, as well as his household, hate to lose him. General Namaan is an important figure in his country; he’s made it both in the military & in the country. He gets leprosy anyhow, like anyone else might.

Perhaps for the first time in his life, this Big Deal realizes his vulnerability. He is threatened by this disease that will bring him down, and he is helpless before it. Not that hearing this fatal diagnosis is easy for anyone - but think of General Namaan in all his power, all his confidence, all his high position, all the things he has achieved in his own strength - and this disease has caught up with him.  All his power cannot heal him. All his armies cannot heal him. All his influence cannot heal him. All his money cannot heal him. This proud, successful, arrogant man who is used to people jumping at his command - imagine him struck down by perhaps a small sore that is identified as leprosy, and carrying with it all the indignations yet to come. 

            We know how when people get a diagnosis like this - we grab at any and every scrap of hope for treatment.  We try to get the best doctors we can,  and if we are rich and connected, we can get the best of the best.  We try and find the latest treatments, we travel to foreign countries to try things that are unapproved here. Some of us radically change our diets, and reach for the promises of Chinese medicine that we’d never have seen as legitimate before.  Those of us who have fought cancer have let our doctors put killing medicines into our bodies, medicines that make us feel worse than we did, medicines that do damage to our bodies as well as the cancer.  We endure it because we know what the disease will do. 

            So its no surprise that General Namaan grabs hold of that possibility of a prophet in another country that might heal him.  He goes for it, because its his only hope.  He is strong, he is a fighter, he has the money, and he can ask his King to write him this letter to get him attention.  He brings all his concentration and his power and influence to bear, throwing his all into finding a way to defeat this enemy inside of him.  Even going into enemy country and taking money to buy the work of this strange religion’s prophet.  All on the hope that the little slave girl is right.

     Now, the king of Israel, another Top Man and Big Deal in Israel, doesn’t know who this Aramean king is talking about, & is deeply fearful  that the country of Aram is fixing to pick a fight, or start a war--- he’s terrified. Why doesn’t the king know of Elisha? Elisha is a prophet of the most high God in his country’s region of Samaria. I guess Elisha was beneath his notice, or he didn’t take the worship of God seriously.  Elisha has to hear of the king’s fear & say, “Ah, excuse me, but I think it means me - send him here.”

        So Namaan continues to travel to the prophet that the young slave girl spoke of.  See what her words started! See what the General’s fear caused him to do for even a small hope!

Yet after all this effort and travel and display of power, General Namaan’s own arrogance & pride almost ruin it, because his pride gets tweaked -  Elisha won’t come out to see him, and just sends word for him to wash in the local ole’ Jordan River. General Namaan gets offended that this guy won’t even talk personally with him, a great General, & almost cuts off his nose to spite his face. Hmmm…. pride versus leprosy.  He’s willing to keep his pride & stay sick, it seems. Not submit himself to the healing words of this prophet of the little country of Israel and its dingy little river.

Namaan the great General wants his healing to be on his own terms, and to be credited to his own power and influence and feats of glory.  He can beat this; he CAN beat this.  Just give me a test of strength, and I will do it. Just ask me to do a difficult task, and I will accomplish it. He wants his own ego to have a part in his healing, so he will be looked up to, and be proud.  If Elisha had given him tasks like Hercules, he would have gone after these challenges in a second. That kept his pride intact, and was worthy of a great man like himself !  But to ignore his person, to send a meager word, to just ask him to dunk himself in a small river - that is not worthy!

Once again, the word is wisdom comes from a servant.  It seems to be difficult for Big Deals and Top Dogs to have the wisdom of the humble.  Maybe humble people don’t have to worry about things as “beneath” them.  There is a kind of caring and kindness that isn’t known at the top, isn’t known by those for whom the system has always worked right.  There is a wisdom that comes from those who already know the margins of a society, those who are familiar with the underside of life.  Those who can work as hard as they want and will never be General Namaan or King, and they know it.  Those who value their reliance on God, and who don’t depend on their own power and influence, but on God. 

So General Namaan is in a snit, and about to walk off, when someone who is not a Top Dog tells him what is.  “Hey, what’s wrong with just doing what Elisha said?  You’d do brave & bold things, right?  You can do this!”  So General Namaan the great warrior humbles himself to the words of a slave girl and another servant, and a prophet of Israel’s God. He plunges in the Jordan, & comes up healed.

     You’ve probably heard several applications and learnings from this story already, right? Let’s go through some.

God doesn’t often speak through the Big Deals & Top Dogs.  God often speaks through the marginal, the despised, the overlooked, folks we might consider of no account. God is not a respecter of pomp and hierarchy and positional power.  God looks on the heart, and sees faith.  I’m not meaning to glorify slavery here, or declare that how our civilization makes some people in lower and disempowered classes has a good side.  Because it doesn’t.

What I’m saying is that those in these bad situations develop a different perspective on what we Winners might think looks like success.  From seeing the underside that we hide from ourselves, they have a word for those of us who think everything is hunky-dory just because it has worked for us so far, and we’re doing okay.  Everything is NOT okay for many, many people, and those folks are our sisters and brothers, members of God’s family, and their worth is known to God, if not to us.  They are not invisible to God, even if they are invisible to us.  And it matters.  THEY matter. That we think everything is fine when our brothers and sisters are suffering, is not okay.  And if we think we are okay and therefore everything is okay, we are dead wrong.  God says that everything is not good until its good for all people. Because those we consider beneath us are our own kin, and we are ignoring them. 

General Namaan thought he had everything worked out and fine - but he didn’t.  He thought that of all people, he deserved better from Elisha - but he didn’t.  He thought he was powerful and strong and unassailable, but he wasn’t.  Those he thought were beneath him, and those he saw as his enemies - they actually are the ones that brought him humility, and brought him healing.  

This is a difficult lesson for those of us for whom the ways of our country seem to be working, those of us who know financial security, who have healthcare, who have enough to eat, who have good educations, who can afford cars and houses and who live in safety.  We forget that there are those for whom this system we’ve developed is NOT working. 

Maybe the great General Namaan’s views of the world were turned over by this experience, where the healing of God came to him through the mouths of slaves and enemies.  Maybe he began to sense the personhood and worth of all people, even those who, in the unjust system in which he lived, were slaves and servants. Maybe he began to see the injustice in his system.  Maybe he began to sense that the power and influence he had as a Big Deal and a Top Dog were really not so important.  Maybe he began to be more caring himself, maybe he was more humble about what he had, and shared it with others who were in need. 

I would hope so. Its a story that made the Scriptures.

If we learn to listen to the wisdom of those seeing the underside of our society, those we might consider lesser, or enemies, or not as good as ourselves - I hope we can also have our view of the world turned upside down.  Most of us here are those for whom things have worked okay.  We have food, houses, healthcare, education, security and safety, a nice church.  Yet we live among those whose stories are far different from our own.  They live all around us, although sometimes invisible to us as we go on our way.  There are people of color around us here that have a very different heritage in this country, and a very different experience of life in the U.S., and a very different take on how we see the 4th of July, for example.  There are single parents and even married parents around us who work hard and still don’t have the security and healthcare that we have.  There are those who experience struggles we can’t begin to know, struggles of discrimination, struggles with PTSD from fighting our wars, struggles from not having the education we take for granted, struggles from growing up in drug-damaged families, where survival is never taken for granted. 

They have a word to say to us - a wisdom to give us - - they are our sisters and brothers, friends, and speak to us of need to which we ignore at the peril of our souls. They tell us things are not right in what we take for granted.  Their stories can open our eyes to the needs of the world.  Their stories can tell us that the ways our country does things contains a lot of injustice, and ignores the voice of many.  They can expand our view of God’s kindom and the call of God to serve.  May it be so for us, as it is for General Namaan, and may God’s healing hand bring us all to the fullness of life. AMEN.

At Least 2 Ways People Know We're Christians 6/30/19 Pentecost 3C

The Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

At Least 2 Ways People Know We’re Christians

6/30/19  Pentecost 3C

  (This was our Inside Church Picnic Sunday, with informal worship in the Fellowship Building)

There’s a story going around about a driver stopping at a crosswalk to let a pedestrian cross safely, then of course, missing the light himself.  So the woman behind him goes ballistic, pounding her horn, screaming and making hand gestures because she hadn’t made the light, either.  Still in mid-rant, she hears a tap on her window and looks up to see a police officer telling her to pull over.  He makes her get out of the car, hands up, and takes her to the police station while she fusses all the way..  After a couple hours, he comes to unlock her cell and let her out, and says:” I’m sorry for the mistake - you see, I was behind you when you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you, cussing a blue streak.  And then I saw the fish sign on your bumper, along with stickers about Follow Me To Sunday School and What Would Jesus Do, so.,,,, naturally I assumed the car was stolen.”

Ah, yeah,....she wasn’t living her testimony that day…..

Its interesting that this passage starts with the concept of freedom, and it falls right here before our 4th of July time in the U.S….. And it DOES talk about the Law - - BUT - before we take off on police or national freedom here, we must note that the freedom the apostle Paul is writing about to the church in the city of Galatia, ISN’T national freedom, or civic freedom.  In fact, that’s the furthest thing from Paul’s mind!  He probably wishes Christ-followers were free to worship God without fear of reprisal from the government.  But what he’s writing about is freedom from the religious Law of Judaism, the Law of Moses, as kept and explained and augmented and defined through the years.  The Law, as a part of Judaism, is meant to be a path of behaviors and actions for those who wish to be obedient to God.  Paul argues in several of his letters to those early churches around the Mediterranean, that when we are in Christ, we are no longer under a legalistic obligation to the Jewish Law, but come to God in faith, made whole through Jesus the Christ.  Of course, in love and gratitude to God and Christ, we turn from our former thoughtless actions, and take on the values of Christ’s kindom, asking the Spirit that indwells us now, to help us live in love and respect of one another, and show us God’s better way. 

            Its a difference in our motivations and our starting place - in Christ, we don’t start with certain defined actions and behaviors, but with the heart-felt response to God’s love that, yes, shows us our brokenness, then invites us through God’s grace to turn and live in the Kindom of Christ.  Ego strength and will-power can help us keep laws  - and although the Jewish Law is meant to lead us to love for God, people can and do miss the point - take for example that rich young man who comes to Jesus and says he kept the Law since his youth - but Christ sees that he is NOT at the point of giving God his all.  And Paul himself, a very dutiful keeper of the Law, even a Pharisee, in his zeal for the Law was ferreting out those he thought were against the Law - ie Christians -  and turning them over to be persecuted and even killed.  That is, until his own encounter with God turns him around.

So its important to the apostle Paul that, as believers in Jesus Christ, we are NOT held captive under the Law and its stated actions.  We are brought into the kingdom of God rather by something NOT of our own doing, and we are granted the invitation and the grace to come to God through Jesus.  However, he argues in this passage that we are still expected to be show the virtues and values of righteousness in God’s eyes.  Not because its the law, but because we love God for first loving us, and seek this higher way of life, both in our inner self, and in our outward behaviors towards others. 

            This changing or transforming of our behaviors comes because God’s Spirit now lives in our hearts, and leads us, guides us, into what Love calls for. Our hearts are open to God, and we listen for God’s voice arising from God’s Spirit who has come to live in us.  Its not so much a list of rules that again enslaves us, but a response of love that desires to please the one who is now our Beloved, and calls us Beloved as well.  Its not a “has to” but a “want to.”  

            Paul’s cautions us that this freedom in Christ doesn’t mean we can run wild in self-indulgence.  You know, in another letter he takes on some clever folks who try to argue that since forgiveness was a good thing, then if they did more wrong things, there’d be more forgiveness!  Ah….that misses the point, actually. In this new relationship with God and one another, the spirit of the old Law is still there - and he quotes Jesus telling us that the Law is basically summed up in two parts - to love God with our entire being, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.  We moved from the letter of the law to the spirit of the law.  We now live as God’s spirit tells us is right.  We live by the SPIRIT and are guided by the SPIRIT, Paul says at the end of this passage.  Don’t let anyone lay stuff on you and enslave you under defined laws, he says. 

            HOWEVER - he then proceeds to lay out examples of what some transformed and un-transformed behaviors are.  And he says that these things can pull on us, they seem as spontaneous even as they are hateful and harmful  - and it takes some awareness on our part to curb those impulses and respond in higher ways.  We saw it in my opening joke - we’ve all felt that way when someone makes us miss the light, especially if its one of those lights on 501 that seem to take 5 minutes per cycle.  Its frustrating! Even if we follow the (civil) law and wait for the pedestrian who has the right of way, we can snarl at the delay.  And the tourists, who only realise they meant to turn left and not right, and cut across three lanes without looking.  Of course, we’ve maybe BEEN the tourist who is confused and afraid to miss the turn and get lost; but still… aagghh!  I will admit to muttering things beneath my breath, especially if I'm in a hurry. 

            It takes a mental reminder, doesn’t it?  It might take a couple deep breaths.  My anger does no one good, including myself.  And if I don’t control myself, the road rage could overtake my good sense.  The apostle Paul calls these kinds of impulses “works of the flesh,” as they seem to be what we do when we give in to our impulses and do harm.  Its God’s Spirit of love - love for me and love for the world - that calls us to better actions….to considered responses instead of reactions.  To remember our new nature in God, our new love in Christ.

Paul gives us some lists of things that seem to be strong impulses in us, physical urges given over to power instead of love -          I mean, sexual attraction and desire in itself is good - and necessary to the species.  Using it to take power over someone who is unwilling - well, that’s not good.  Jealousy or envy just kind of spring up in our emotions without any thought - we don’t have to work to feel those.  We DO have to wrestle with these feelings in order for them not to get the best of us, ruin relationships and destroy friendships.  Quarrels and angry words just pop up when we disconnect our mouth and brain, when we speak out of our first rush of anger without any consideration - our basest responses, right there out of our mouth, never having passed through the screen of our minds that can tell us what is loving and what is helpful. 

God’s Spirit plants new desires in our hearts and souls - what Paul calls the “fruit” of the Spirit, what grows from the indwelling Spirit.  Love.  Joy.  Peace.   Patience.  Kindness. Generosity.  Faithfulness.  Gentleness.   Self-control. These are outward signs of the inward Spirit of God in us. Christ-followers, Christians, in other words, will show these signs. They’ll know we are Christians by our love. 

They won’t know the truth about God by our anger.  By our exclusions.  By our hate.  By our divisions.  By our mouthing off.  By our brutality.  By our losing it when we’re ignored or maligned.  By our power over other people.

The development of these spiritual “fruit” are rather a testimony to the work of God in our lives.  If they are not there, one has to wonder at a person’s spiritual maturity.  One has to wonder what difference God has made in their living, and how they are listening to the Spirit.  In my experience, these gifts don’t manifest all by themselves - even if the Spirit piques our conscience about it, we still have to do some work.  We have to realize what our words and actions are doing to other people, and care. We have to want these characteristics more than we want to just do what springs to our minds and mouths.  We have to practice what they look like.  One day they will become an inner part of us that is so important that we act that way almost naturally, and to act differently feels odd.  We consciously choose to let the Spirit show these fruit in us.  They come from spending time with God in prayer, in seeking forgiveness and change.  In saying “Yes” to God’s love growing in us.  In biting our tongue before we let these other kinds of things out of our mouths, or taking deep breaths until the urge to strike back takes over.

Many folks tell me that this is how they witness to Christ in their lives, and it is a strong witness. 

There is however, another way of telling about our faith in Christ - the kind we do intentionally with words; words that are illustrated and given validity because of our transformed lives.  Yes, the dreaded “E” word - yes, evangelism.  While our actions and our transformed nature can witness to our faith in God, there comes a point when we have to explain why and how…. Why we bother to bite our tongue and not lash out, even in great provocation.  How we’ve come to see and respect all people, despite differences that often DO separate people. What led us to confront our own racism.  Why we now listen to what women say about being attacked, or about the microaggressions that still affect us in where we work and how we’re treated.  Or why its important to hear the stories of our black friends, and learn about how they experience racism.  How we found healing and forgiveness for our wounds from others’ bad actions.  How and where we found the strength to overcome an addiction.  Why we care that poor children are suffering malnutrition in our country, in our county - as well as around the world.  What is it that moves us in our acts of mercy and mission?  Why bother? 

There comes a time when words are necessary, when it is important for us to be able to say how much we care about God’s Word, Jesus Christ. Why the values of Christ’s kingdom have become our values.  How God supported us in our time of grief.  What it means to us that God loves all people, and how that love has changed us, so we see that love, too. 

In my background, I did that buttonholing thing to folks out eating lunch in the park, coming up and asking them that if they died tonight, are they sure of heaven?  Trying to get them to read a booklet about the 4 Spiritual Laws, and pray to “receive Jesus” while leaving what that means unspoken.  All they knew of me was that I was earnest and rude about it.  It was quick, and it was over.  In what I think was a genuine Christian spirit, I beganto feel  too badly for the people I was buttonholing to keep doing it.  (It was weird to be at the Presbyterian Seminary studying for the ministry and to have earnest young people come and try to “witness” to me, as if we Presbyterians didn’t “really” know God.  Less than 10 years prior, I was them.) 

Vital Congregations uses the big words, Incarnational, Authentic Evangelism - ie words that come out of who we are with God as we live as a human person.  A truth-telling of what has changed or convicted us.  What is real and meaningful to us about our faith. 

We don’t even talk at this level among ourselves too much, so we’re not super comfortable with it.  We haven’t worked out what words to use, and maybe even what we think or feel,...so the words are choked off and difficult.  It takes practice to speak of things that are deep in our hearts, and especially it takes inner courage.  Its easiest to practice with people we trust to not make fun of us, to believe us, to listen to us.  Hopefully we’ll design some times to work at finding those words for ourselves, so we’ll be ready and not too super scared when someone asks, Why are you at this soup kitchen? Or, why do you give your hard-earned money to the church? Or, How come you didn’t totally smack that person who dissed you?  Or, why are you nice to that loser?  The occasion will arise when the fruit of the Spirit are showing up.  That’s what ‘authentic ‘is. Living it is what ‘incarnational’ is.  Evangelism is what happens.

Caring about people will lead us into situations of friendship and sharing.  Having the inner courage ( and the words) to tell about what forms us and what is important to us, and why God matters to us, goes a lot farther than just a nice, “You should visit our church sometime.”  Or hoping our actions intrigues them enough that they ask someone besides us to explain it all. 

Someone once described Christ’s Church as the place where hungry people share the bread they’ve found with other hungry people. We offer the spiritual bread that has met our spiritual hunger, and can also meet theirs.    AMEN.