I have always loved desserts - and
other things, too, of course - deviled eggs, for one thing...watermelon for
another. Good 4th of July picnic
foods! My Mom often told a story on me,
that one time she said, What do you want for dessert, Becky? There’s cake, jello and ice cream - and I
answered, some of each! And she always
told how I defended myself - that the
ice cream melts and runs around everything else in my stomach, so I’m never too
full for ice cream! Our favorite was
Daddy’s homemade ice cream, and on holidays like the 4th of July, we would
gather at my Aunt Ginny’s place on the river, and take turns churning that old
thing until it got too hard for us.
After dark we played with sparklers; then when it was good and dark, the
parents would set off fountains and rockets, while the mosquitos had their
dinner on our legs and arms.
Mom gave me mixed signals about
enjoying desserts. At one moment she’d
tell me I was going to be fat if I ate those desserts; the next moment she’d be
asking in a criticizing voice, Why didn’t you try your Aunt’s banana bread or
your sister’s brownies? They worked hard on them! There was no way to please her - I got
negative comments if I ate, and negative comments if I didn’t. Another conflicting message was about school
work - she complained that I wasn’t popular enough because I worked on stuff
too hard, then turned around and asked why I got a B+ instead of an A.
That’s what I thought about when I
read the beginning of this passage in Matthew 11 - people discounted John the
Baptizer because he was so ascetic - living in the desert and eating locust and
wild honey, wearing skins….then they discounted Jesus because he ate and drank
with sinners! There’s just no pleasing
some people! We are inconsistent with
our expectations and there’s always something to criticize - especially if we
don’t want to hear what they are saying anyway. Discount the person, discount
their message. And we all grow up with
these kinds of inherited patterns or mixed messages and ambiguities and the
resulting neuroses of one kind or another.
In times of stress, these things come out more in us, too.
We’re certainly in a continuing time
of stress right now - I saw where a person coined the term “Covid exhaustion”
to explain how, even though the immediate crisis and changes are past, it’s
hanging around so long that we’re getting exhausted. Unfortunately, it's going
to hang around longer. People are
already showing their inability to cope with ongoing stress - wanting to get
back to how we were, to quit thinking about the dangers and quit following the
precautions. Did you read about those reckless folks throwing covid parties,
where an infected person attends, everyone buys a ticket to come to an event
with them, and the first one to get sick
wins the pot from the ticket sales???
The other day on a Zoom meeting, the leader asked us how we were doing
now that its 3 ½ months down the road - I think we all said a mix of okay days
and hard days. The stress is real and
unrelenting, and it adds up.
Most people find it difficult to
deal with frustration and negative feelings - and not just with this current
crisis. One of the texts also assigned
for today was in the Apostle Paul's letter to the Roman believers, where he
talks about how miserable he gets, because the good things he wants to do get
sidetracked by this other part of himself that wants to do just the
opposite! I know that experience - like
I can look at desserts and know they’re going to throw my blood sugar
off….but...but...don’t I deserve a treat for being good all day yesterday? The stress of fighting that battle daily gets
to me after a while, and I find myself pacing the floor and agitating and opening cupboard
doors until I give in and have something that soothes me. Yes, struggles with all addictions are like
that - and worse, when there’s a physical addiction as well.
We fear feeling our fear; we fear
recognizing that we’re not in control.
We fear the feeling that we can’t fix things, like the Covid
crisis. So we fuss, we get polarized, we
attack one another, all kinds of stress behavior - because we’re uncomfortable
and things aren’t the same. We don’t
mean to be snippy - it just happens. We don’t
mean to be jealous - it just happens. Like Paul, we want to be kind and understanding,
we just can’t. Do you remember that old
cartoon picture of the guy with an angel speaking in one ear, and a devil
speaking to the other ear? We all know what that’s like. We are fallible and sometimes broken, we
can’t fix the world; and the words of Jesus offering us rest from the burdens
of life fall as grace on our ears.
I had to think about what kind of
“rest” Jesus was talking about, because I have to say that I haven’t found that
taking on the way of Jesus, the spiritual journey of following Christ, to be
easy. Jesus' words sound
easy - believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and you will be saved…that doesn’t sound too difficult; love one another as I
have loved you…that doesn’t seem too onerous;....be kind to one another…I can
do that, with some thought. Yet when we
start to try and do them, it opens up a can or worms in our insides…I don’t
want to be kind to this or that person; why do I have to love people I find
stupid? Like the man says to Jesus,
“lord, I believe - and help my unbelief.’
Jesus says that his yoke is easy, and the
burden is light. One of the
intertestamental books, continuing the horse metaphor, says that God’s reins
are but purple ribbons - another image of the lightness of God’s touch. Yoke is an interesting word - it’s actually
got a connection to the word yoga.
Evidently yoking one horse to another was a way to teach it discipline;
so the 4 yogas in Hinduism were ways to discipline our minds and bodies towards
seeking enlightenment. I enjoy thinking
that Jesus was saying, Take my yoga on, be yoked with me, learn from me, be
trained with me, follow my path, my way to God and salvation. We might remember that early followers of
Christ called themselves followers of The Way - the way of Christ. Christianity isn’t a set of doctrines to
memorize so we get an A on the systematic theology test; Christianity is a path
to God, a way of living that is intended to bring us into relationship with
God, train us, teach us discipline (in a good way), reveal insight and wisdom
to us as we deal with our inconsistencies and broken places. We begin to be humbled as we see our common
human predicament, and we begin to understand and empathize with the sufferings
of others. We become more human; and at
the same time more Christ-like. Christianity is more a journey of living into
an awareness of God that permeates our whole being and lifetime. Scripture calls it the transforming of our
heart, a transformation from the inside out. Jesus calls it gentle and mild and
easy; it can certainly be rigorous, though - it is, however, taken because God
loves us, and our love for God grows, too.
So it's not a harshness or a mean-spiritedness, a following of rules out
of fear.
It reminds me of that ancient
general Namaan, who came seeking the great prophet Elijah in order to be healed
of leprosy. He came with a huge
entourage and lots of gifts, ready to undertake a quest or pay all he had - and
Elijah doesn’t even come out to see him, but says, go wash in the Jordan
River. Namaan is insulted - it's too
easy - there were rivers in his own country that were bigger and better. So he’s actually going away, giving up
on being healed because he feels insulted!
A servant challenges his pride, so eventually he obeys the prophet - and
is healed. Almost, almost, his issues
with pride and status kept him from being healed. We start to do those “easy” things and it
ends up making us deal with our own issues….hmmm….
We are called by Jesus to take on
his way, his yoke or yoga - and find a soulful rest; we are called to find a
restored relationship to God, to creation, and to one another; which is what
we’re meant to be and do. God calls us to be an authentic human, made in God’s
image; Jesus offers to bring us into that unitive place of oneness with God and
all creation that our soul longs for, our true home, our true freedom.
The celebration of communion today
is so appropriate, isn’t it? The
traditional outline of the sacrament tells us that we gather around this table
with believers from all times and all places; each other here, those who went
before us, and those who will come later; and with all of God. We are all one, and all dependent on
God. We take our sacred elements from
God’s creation - bread and cup, matter and spirit, male and female, all
divisions overcome in our greater unity; a wholeness;... we are fed physically
and spiritually, nurtured by our loving God.
One day I’ll write a sermon about communion and go into all this much
more - it’s a wonderful sacrament, holy and beautiful - and also so basic.
Let’s prepare our hearts now.
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