A Service of Healing 3/29/20 Lent t5A

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

A Service of Healing

3/29/20    Lent 5A

Well, we’re a week before Holy Week begins in our church calendar.  Next week we’ll read again the story of how Jesus is welcomed like a Strong Deliverer and then in just a few days, turned on in anger and disappointment, and killed as an agitator against the government.  These lectionary texts for today are a reminder, before we go through those difficult stories, that from the beginning our God has been a God of life and new creation. The power of God to create life and restore life have been themes of the Jewish Scriptures in Job and the prophets, especially Ezekiel and Isaiah, from way back.  However, as Martha says in this reading from John’s gospel, the teaching was that this resurrection was for the last days, the end of times.  

I think it may be a good reminder for us as well - as we are in this time of mounting tension and fear of how this virus is going to spread and how bad things might get.  Numbers of new cases and serious cases are still going up in our county and other counties around the country. Perhaps these words are a timely reminder to us that our God is a God of new life and new creation - always has been, and always will be.  We can trust in God’s love and power and desire for life to thrive even as we wonder where this national crisis is going to take us.  

I was talking this week to a woman who remembers the rationing of butter and other foods, and the Victory Gardens homes were encouraged to have, from the World War 2 era. That certainly was a time of national fear, of changes that affected virtually every home.  I don’t think there’s been this kind of national response to a crisis in my lifetime - well, I remember lining up for gas on alternate days in a time when gas availability was tight…. And I was alive in the Cuban Missile Crisis, although I was in 1st grade & didn’t realize a lot of what was going on.  We lived in DC then, where it was a big worry for my parents. My parent’s generation had the Great Depression in their childhoods, a stark memory of national crisis.  

I talked to my daughter this week and she tentatively said, “This is going to be in the history books, isn’t it mom?” It hadn’t occurred to me yet, but she’s probably right.  And we will probably remember the year we had to celebrate Palm Sunday and Easter watching a service on facebook…. if not other parts yet to come. We need to hold on to God’s promises to always be with us, and that where God is, love and life are. Hold on to that - trust that God is with us, God loves us, and we are all ultimately okay.  

In my preparation of bulletins before my vacation, wanting to be ahead and to have time to think about things and plan with music and all, I had designed this service today to be a service of healing and wholeness, a service based around the promise of restoration and new life.  It seems that is still a good purpose, and in fact, even a better purpose now in this crisis time.  

The words from the prophet Ezekiel are about God restoring spiritual life and power to the Israelites, when their spirits were pretty much annihilated by all the things that had happened to them - being conquered by this nation and that nation, carried off into foreign lands, and much suffering.  Ezekiel has this great visionary experience where dry, long dead bones are reclothed in flesh, and then reanimated by the breath of God into living souls. It’s a powerful picture of how the Spirit can come back into us and rekindle that spark life, that spark of hope, that spark of joy. A whole organization, a whole people, a whole Church can be rejuvenated and stirred up by that bracing wind of God’s Spirit.  I’ve already heard people wondering about what the state of their congregation will be when this is over - fearing that many of our small congregations may be too broke or too decimated to continue. I want to hold on to this vision of Ezekiel’s, where the bones that are so old that they are dry and returning to dust - these bones are regathered, remade, and re-animated with the breath of God, to become again a great congregation praising God.  Keep this in front of our fearful eyes, and as an answer to our worrisome doubts. Our God is one who makes a way out of no way, who made all that is just by speaking. This is a great and inspirational vision.  

The encounter of Jesus with the family of Mary, Martha and Lazarus is a similar reminder that God is Life; and where God is, the very power of Life itself is.  Here one person is restored to life, and the loving family is restored again to wholeness. Mary and Martha are realists about their brother Lazarus’ death in regards to the practical details and knowledge of death; they also know their faith’s teachings about the last days. At the same time, they are immersed in and overwhelmed by the grief of their loss.  That seems paradoxical…. Martha knows what her faith teaches about resurrection at the end times, yet still grieves over her brother.  

An early and traumatic memory of mine from when my youngest sister died - I was newly 7, and I can remember standing at the church door as people came out from her funeral service to shake our hands, faces wet with tears, to assure us that Susie’s suffering was over, and she was with God, and in a better place.  I remember wondering, “Then why are they crying, if it’s better to be in heaven and her suffering is over?” I was pretty literal at 7 years old, and didn’t understand holding those 2 things together. I didn’t understand that one can know the teachings of faith yet still suffer human feelings of loss. I realized later that they were trying to find something comforting to say, and didn’t at all mean to take away our sadness, our loss or our grief - well, maybe they hoped these sayings would somewhat mitigate our sorrow, maybe it helped them at some point of loss in their life.  Those kinds of sayings don’t really do much when one is experiencing the loss and the sudden change of how our world was going. I don’t say them to grieving people when it’s so close to their loss - I say I’m so sorry and look for some way to offer practical help, or just be present, just listening to their stories. LAter on, people can remember those promises and perhaps find some solace. At the point of the loss, it just sort of goes in one ear and out the other.  

I mean, even Jesus cried over Lazarus’ death.  And certainly Jesus knew the power of God - he says to Martha,  “I, I am the resurrection and the life!” Yet he also wept. My New Revised Standard translation says that Jesus was greatly disturbed and deeply moved.  The actual Greek words refer anatomically to what are called “the bowels of compassion.” He felt it in his gut, we might say, knowing how we feel these deep losses in our bodies, can’t eat, or get nauseous.  Grief affects us physiologically, and that’s how Jesus felt, too. He felt in his own body the contradiction between the power of death and the Godly power of life, and he acted. That’s love, that’s compassion - com-passion - with passion, with emotion, with feeling.  God weeps with us, and works for restoration and life and healing.

The message that I hear from these Scriptures that have been preserved and come down to us from our faith ancestors, is not to forget that our God is a God of new life; God is always responding in each moment, responding to the events that happen and working to restore life again.  Yes, we have difficult times; yes, we have losses; yes, we have to cope with sudden changes and uncertainty and fear. Yet God does not abandon us in hard times; Jesus cries and mourns with us, the Spirit whispers assurance in our souls. I posted a hymn Friday that says “God is with us in the storm,” a good message for these times we’re in.   I posted His Eye Is on the Sparrow, too - “I know who holds tomorrow, and I know who holds my hand.” All truths we need to remember as we face whatever it is that is coming towards us and our world.  

There’s a Mr. Rogers quote that’s been going that indicates a way to manage our fears -  reminding us that in a crisis, look for the helpers. We are, after all, created in God’s image, and filled with God’s love.  If God can be present in trouble and be deeply moved, so are we. As God seeks healing and restoration, so can we. As God loves and cares for those going through hard times, so can we.  In fact, as the gathering believers, the church, the very Body of Christ, we can be God’s hands and feet and hearts and bowels of compassion to each other. The same caring we feel for our own immediate families, we can feel towards others as well.  Our hearts have room for much love and care, although since we’re not God, we have to do some self-care so we don’t burn out. God doesn’t burn out.  

Already we are seeing signs of good and caring people around us - take note of these, lift them up.  Lift up the courage of our health care people who are staying the course with the ill. Lift up the faithfulness and courage of those still stocking shelves at the markets, and filling prescriptions at the pharmacies.  Give thanks for those working in keeping our basic sanitation going, our power going, our mail going, our internet going. Give thanks that people have specialized in epidemics and the study of pandemics - it may have seemed unneeded before now, but now we’re glad for the forethought.  Give thanks for the researchers looking for vaccines and medicines. I know all of us are continuing to pray for all these people as well as for the future. Hold on to what we know in our hearts about God, the promises that God has kept through history, and will continue to keep now. AMEN.

Temptation: That Crafty Persuasion Gen 2

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

Temptation: That Crafty Persuasion

Lent 2A      3/8/2020 

            When my firstborn son was, I don’t know, 3? 4? 5?  He was talking well, anyway, and thinking things.  He came to me in the kitchen, and asked politely if he could have an ice cream sandwich - he’d eaten a good lunch, he would take it on the porch and not make a mess. (All this explanation should have been a clue….) I was so pleased with his politeness and thoughtfulness, that I said “Yes,”  thanked him for asking so nicely, and gave him an ice cream sandwich.  He went outside to the porch and ate it. When he was done, he returned  to the kitchen beaming, and explained - “I tricked you, Mommy!  Daddy gave me one, too!!!” 

I was angry, dismayed -  and strangely wanted to crack up laughing at how he was telling on himself.  Being a pastor and theologian, my brain goes odd places - I immediately knew that he had just eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  He was now his own creature, with the flush of having done something unique, and proud of his ability to think.  I knew that his dad and I would have to start being more aware now. 

My text today, as was read a few moments ago, is part of the saga of the early chapters of Genesis.  “In the Beginning” is the Hebrew name of the book, based on its first word.  I like the name “Beginnings.”  It’s a foundational book, explaining how things came to be as they are; or better, a way of putting forward the understanding of things through a trust and assurance of God’s involvement with it all.  How people and God and all creation are involved together.  How humanity is a commingling of the stardust of earth and the life-giving breath of the Divine.  How we find ourselves struggling with good and evil, mortality, feeling apart from God and longing to regain a wholeness that we intuit is there, and how difficult it is to eke a living on earth. 

All cultures have origin stories that give their people a basic orientation to how things are and try to answer the “why.”  I went on a quest to read lots of creation stories some years back, so I could hear our stories with a new ear, get past the literalism most of us were raised on, and get to the truths that are being communicated from way back. 

Genesis has 2 tellings of how God made things and how they are for us humans.  Each uses a distinct name for God.  Since we don’t read Hebrew (if we did the different names for God would be obvious), the English translation tries to show this by using various forms of God & Lord with capital first letters, and the all-capital LORD; sometimes combined as Lord God.    tIt’s not arbitrary - they are trying to show us the different traditions.  It’s interesting to know that as we read.  Those of you reading the Bible through right now, note the word and the spelling of  Lord and God as you read. 

The first telling of creation and God is the version with the wonderful refrain, “God saw that it was good,” and “the evening and the morning were the first/ second etc day,”  It’s actually quite an interesting study on biology - starting with water, land emerging, plants emerging, then sea life emerging, then animal life.  On what the story calls the 6th day, humanity is created in the image of God, male and female, no detail.  That is called good, too.  On the 7th day, God rests - the origin of Sabbath.  

The 2nd telling starts with the bare earth and the heavens, and God creates the human out of earthy stuff, dust, humus - and the life-giving Spirit or breath. Then in a few words God makes a garden for the human and makes lots of animals to try and make a companion to the human. Most Bible readers call this human Adam, and assume it's male.Not so! At this point the creature is a generic Human made from humus or Earthling made from Earth. It’s a play on words, and tells us what we are in our name.   Dust - enlivened by divine breath, Spirit. The translators made some assumptions here, in using the Hebrew word Adam as a name - a better name, in my humble opinion, might be “Dusty.”   That would translate the pun that identifies us.   Its interesting to note that in this story, God says that it’s NOT GOOD for Dusty to be solo.  If the various animals aren’t close enough companions, God takes a piece of Dusty & makes another dust creature.  In this way, the story tells us that the community aspect of humanity is important, that we need one another, and that sexuality and gender are a good part of the way things are.  That’s the situation we find ourselves in living in the world, and according to our faith, it's on purpose. 

This next part of the story has seen through a lens of cultural stereotypes by generations, and is a mis-interpretation that has led to much denigration of women.  In fact, the mis-interpretation does the same thing as the characters in the story - it throws blame.  People have read all sorts of things into the story that simply are not there - and used this story to justify putting down women, calling us the Devil’s gateway, wondering if we had souls, and blocking the use of our gifts in church.  In effect, they’ve acted out just what the human Adam and Eve do in the story - blame the other, try and justify and explain away misogyny, and avoid responsibility for it. In that mis-interpreting way, women are still held as temptresses, especially in a sexual way; even court cases this past year have blamed the woman for a man’s misbehavior.  

This is the text we read today is known in theology as “THE FALL.”

If you were reading a story where there are multiple doors and the character is given permission to open them all except one, what ALWAYS happens?  Yes, the character wonders why, wonders what could possibly be in that door, and eventually opens it.  In our text,  I can’t help but say, “What’s with that one tree?” and get curious.  That’s how humans are. The story calls it the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; and the story tells us it’s inevitable that we will learn this…..and that it will also make us grieve.  This is who we humans are, and this is the situation we find ourselves in, in life.  We know good and we know evil, and we are grieved by it; we can’t fix it, we try to get out from under it with blaming and justifying and avoiding because it's hard to admit.   The wholeness we seem to intuit and long for is only available through God, through Jesus, that human who was able to live in unity of spirit and matter, flesh and spirit, God and humanness. 

Like my son, all of us come to the point of knowing good and evil - & at a young age.  It looks promising, that getting what we want...and getting away with it.  And our sense of loss of innocence, our sense of guilt, our trying to wriggle away from it, follows on its heels. 

People who don’t feel this loss and wrongness of evil are sociopaths. 

Human history is full of both those who strive to do well, who have compassion and care about others than themselves, who seek peaceful ways of living together, who seek kindness, who seek the good for all - these Scripture calls the fruit of the Spirit.  Human history is also full of those who take what they want with violence, only seek good for their own tribe, glory in brutality and conquering, using all kinds of justifications and blaming.  If we can’t see these two things fighting within ourselves, we can at least see it in history.  Humans have eaten of the tree of good and evil.  And the lure and attraction of the evil are large - it feeds our desires, and tries to answer our feelings of insecurity. 

The faith stories of Scripture go on to tell us that God has always sought to provide a way of restoration of the relationship between us and God, between us and others, between us and all creation.  Showing us who God is through creation is a way; giving The Law was another; coming in flesh in Jesus was yet another.  The Jesus who we worship shows that perfect awareness of Spirit and flesh, living totally with God while being human.  The possibilities of the Kingdom of God attracted many followers among those humans around him - and also created hatred and fear in those who thought they were happy doing things their own way.  So Jesus was killed, rejected by the Empire which he criticized.  And God vindicated him by raising him in a new creation, what the Scripture calls a Second Adam, the start of a new thing that we are all invited to enter and enjoy.

I like to read a guy named Frederick Buechner, and among the wise things he says is that the Gospel is bad news before it is good news.  The bad news is that we know good and evil, and that evil is difficult to withstand.  In fact, it's really hard to look at ourselves and admit how much we do is self-motivated, how much we do because of our basic brokenness, no matter how much we desire and long for the good.  Yet without that admission, without that looking into the mirror and seeing our knowledge of good AND evil , we can’t get to where the gospel becomes, in fact, good news - that we can be made right with God through following Jesus, saying yes to Jesus’ invitation to repent and step into the kingdom of God, to take the path of following Jesus as our path, and learning from him.

These stories tell us what we are like, and show us that we have all eaten of that tree of good and evil, then show us that God has made a way for that longing for healing and wholeness are freely available.  The invitation is to look at ourselves honestly, with God’s help; and to turn in the direction of following Jesus, with God’s help.  May God’s Spirit strengthen us and enlighten us.  AMEN.

Temptations: Seeking Worth in All the Wrong Places Lent 1-A

The Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

Temptations:  Seeking Worth in All the Wrong Places

Mar 1, 2020    Lent 1A

Welcome to the first Sunday in Lent. 

These weeks leading up to Holy Week are traditionally a time of introspection, prayer, confession, examination of our spiritual commitments to God, and pondering the obedience and self-giving of Jesus our Christ.  Traditionally, it’s been a time of taking on a sacrifice ourselves- a partial fast, or giving up something to experience perhaps just a little of what Jesus experienced in the desert.  Jesus’ time in the desert reminds me of the Native American Vision Quest, where a person goes to a deserted place to fast and pray some days, seeking a vision to guide them.   I’ve seen pictures from Native American artists showing Christ on a vision quest, with prayer flags, dream catcher and sage.   It's interesting that Buddhism also has Sidhartta Gautama enduring three similar temptations as he sat under the bodhi tree, before he found enlightenment and became the Buddha.  There’s some good articles online about that if you want to look them up. 

According to our Holy Writings, God’s Spirit leads Jesus into this wilderness experience between his baptism and the beginning of his ministry.  It's this time of testing that gives Jesus the strength of his call, this vision of who he is and what he’s to do, and the strength to endure and understand.

I see a theme of temptation in the Scriptures of the next weeks, so we will be looking at those things that can derail our spiritual lives in the next weeks.  So today let’s look and ponder together the nature of those temptations or tests that Jesus faced. Like much Scripture, they sound literal, but when we think of them, they become something much deeper.

 Jesus’ first temptation, that of making bread when he was obviously very hungry, represents the way bodily desires, although good and made by God, can also get in the way of seeking the spiritual life; especially when seeking them becomes our purpose instead of seeking God. These material things become our security instead of security in God; we mistake our security and worth as found in these things rather than finding our security and worth in God.  We wouldn’t have to be total hedonists to have bought into the idea that the meaning of life is found money and things, or to mistake the seeking of these things to replace the seeking of God.

Social scientists tell us that commercials have changed in the last decades, from telling us that their product is good & better than other products, to telling us our lives will be fulfilled & meaningful with their product.  They’re not so much selling us a reliable car and good service, as they are selling us a view of ourselves as cool and slick and a babe magnet if we buy their car.  They don’t so much sell us a floor cleaner that gets up the crud in the cracks and corners, as they do sell us a view of ourselves as a competent and attractive woman who uses their product and has a full life, a nice house, nice clothes, a handsome spouse and cute kids.  Otherwise we are empty losers at life, and insignificant in the universe. 

What????   And people buy it!!!  That using x or y product will fill our deep spiritual desire for worth, meaning and value.  If we think about it, we know we can’t ever satisfy spiritual hungers with material goods.  Affluence is not the answer to spiritual desires.  But it’s all around us and we sink into this way of thinking rather unconsciously.  It's an easy answer, more alluring than the discipline of a spiritual journey.  A writer I admire went so far as to call malls our new American temples, where we gather and do things together, and give our money - in hopes that we will be seen as worthy and our lives seen as important and good.  It sounds ridiculous when I put it like this, doesn’t it?  Yet, yet, how much does that cool new gadget or bigger TV or updated computer or a new “look” in clothing, or a bigger car or house - how much have these things taken over our brains and desires, our use of money?  Even if we have to go into debt?  Advertisers are good at manipulating us - it works- it sells. 

My personal opinion is that the lure of affluence is a major failing in America. I think it has sidetracked our culture, and led to a wider gap between the haves and the have nots, and made it almost a moral or ethical sin to be poor.  It sidetracks much of our spiritual desire for God.  Not that good food and good relationships are bad, not that hoping for a good family and nice things is bad - God’s creation is good. It's just not the answer to a spiritual need, and it’s not a substitute for seeking God. 

The second temptation Jesus faces, testing God by throwing himself off a high place and forcing God to catch him, is harder to parse for me.  It has something to do with a rather simplistic and “proof-texting” use of Scripture, like You said the angels would catch me, so prove it!  Testing God, and with a simplistic understanding of Scripture.  Perhaps, even more, trying to manipulate God. 

One of my fave stories on my daughter is from when she was 3 or 4, and learning her powers.  She came up to me and began stroking my hair, telling me I’m such a good mommy, the best mommy, and so pretty, such nice hair.  So now can she have  roller blades?  I broke up laughing  - she was SO obvious in her manipulation. She got better as she got older….trying to make me do what she wanted, especially as a way to see if I loved her more than the boys. Everything was a test.  Who did I love most?  I worked to make her know how much she was loved and to trust my love - and I resisted the attempts to manipulate me.  If she didn’t trust my love, I couldn’t prove it.  And my love for her didn’t mean I would always do what she wanted. 

I wonder if this temptation isn’t a similar thing between us and God. The Tempter says to Jesus, IF you are the son of God, make God do what this Scripture says for you!  Jesus evidently sees through the ruse, and refuses to test God’s love, or his own worth to God.  Jesus rests securely in the knowledge of God’ love without framing it as a test and a manipulation.  We can fall into that, though - it’s subtle.  I prayed for a bike and didn’t get it - I’m not important to God like my friend who DID get a bike.  We all went snowboarding - why was I the one that hit a tree and have to recover for years? I prayed for my dad to live and he died - my friend’s dad recovered from his cancer - God must love him more, and not love me.  I prayed to get that job and didn’t.  And they hired a jerk - I was better than him!  Where was God’s justice?    Like we are insecure in God’s love unless we can cause God to do what we want. Like my daughter eventually grew into a more mature understanding of my love, we also have to wrestle with our misunderstanding of God’s love until we rest in it like Jesus did.

We Christ-followers are not immune to having things happen to us.  I had two infants who were born very ill - I prayed for them both - one died, one lived.  God was with me during my grief and anger over the loss, through the pain in my family.  I asked God some hard questions at the time, yet God didn’t leave me.  We came through it - yes I was changed, more insightful, it took a lot of wrestling, and good friends to hear me out.   

Jesus’ third temptation was the temptation of the power to make the world as he wanted it, with his own influence and power over people and events. The temptation to be a dictator, to establish a powerful kingdom that could wipe out those who disagreed, the power perhaps of outlawing any dissenting voice or calling it fake news. Taking away individual’s rights and choices, repressing whole populations who disagree. Political power, military power, power over - power over whatever and whoever.  It’s interesting that the Tempter can promise to give this to Jesus, IF Jesus turns aside from what he knows of God  and follows after the ways of the Tempter; instead of following the way of love, which is the way of God.  Carl Jung and others after him have said that the will to power is the opposite of love.  Not hate, but the will to power, power-over.  It reminds me of the saying that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. 

Seeking to live according to God’s power of love has so much less of the ego in it, so much less of the recognition and acclaim. The power of love sets aside the ego.  God’s power of love, that Jesus lived into, is shown in this communion meal we partook earlier - a willingness to set aside and not be fooled by the shallower promises of affluence, power or manipulation.  God’s power is love, and a love that is willing to lay down its life for a friend.  A love that trusts, that knows its own worth, that willingly places its faith in God’s hands no matter what happens.  A love that doesn’t insist on its own way, a love that never loses hope. 

Nobody ever said that faith was for sissies.  Living according to God, living in faith and trust, demands a wrestling and a struggle with temptations that are sometimes overt, yet often subtle.   We can fool ourselves so easily; it takes great strength and courage to rightly examine our motives and incentives, and still choose the way of God.  May the Spirit of God fill us and move us as we seek to live ever more in faith.  AMEN.