Where Many Religious Go Wrong 9/2/18 Pentecost 15B

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

WHERE MOST RELIGIOUS GO WRONG

Sept 2, 2018     Pentecost 15-B Mark 7:1-8, 21-23

My mom was not shy, and loved to argue about things, or at least to pick at them.  She taught 5th grade, and had a couple teachers that would exchange, uh, remarks about religion with her. There was a time mom and this other teacher were exchanging, ah, remarks, about salvation, and this other teacher took issue with mom’s Baptist view that a person could turn to Christ on their deathbed and still be in heaven.  “You mean some prostitute could turn to God right before she died, after the life she’s lived and the things she’s done, and she’d be forgiven and go to heaven the same as me?  When I’ve lived my whole life responsibly, gone to church, and obeyed God’s rules for my whole life?” Mom said, “Yep, that’s right. God will forgive her and save her just the same.”  This other teacher didn’t think much of that concept, nor did she want to share heaven with people like that. It DOESN’T seem fair if you are only counting up your good deeds on earth; and you forget to have any place for grace, mercy and forgiveness, which are BIG words in Christian faith.

Its curious to me that this other teacher chose sexual behavior as her example - and only for the woman, to boot.  And a traditional knee-jerk reaction to those in the trade for whatever reason, as opposed to those who are just hedonistic and promiscuous..., not to mention the aspect of who’s being abused. She wasn’t from my home church, but she could have been, with her judgement on sexual mores, skipping over things like murder, larceny, exploitation, lying, greed, pride and more. My home church certainly preached more sermons against sexual things than anything else - except maybe politicians.  

It’s easy to fall into a kind of ‘holier-than-thou’ stance when we are looking at our faith as a list of things to do and rules to follow, and when we’ve become pretty good at following certain of those that our community has deemed important.  Perhaps we began by following all the teachings we could because of loving & desiring to follow God’s teachings as best we could. Yet, feeling like the rich young ruler who came to Jesus by night, we say, ‘all these things have we kept from our youth,’ and we know that something is still lacking on the heart level.  We may look at others who aren’t doing what we do - or we compare ourselves to others, and we come out favorably over them. Maybe the attitude is, “How can he/she do those things and still get the promotion instead of me? make more money than me? have a nicer house than me?” ...whatever it is that we’re envious of.  Maybe the attitude is more like, “Hey, I wish my conscience would let me do that!” Maybe it’s more like, “Eeeewwww, don’t let those kinds of people in here with us!” or “Thank goodness at least I don’t do THAT!”

I’m not talking about the kind of evaluating we HAVE to do, like when we consider who would be good for a certain job or who would be a safe babysitter - of course we have to exercise discernment on many things.  You wouldn’t want to knowingly hire someone with the wrong skills, or who wasn’t reliable, or who had a record of abuse.

We’re more talking about that spiritual hierarchy we sometimes fall into, where WE are the observant believers who attend church and live right, and therefore look down on those who don’t.  Sometimes, unfortunately, it’s those of us who are the most devout and observant of our Christian living who can be the ones who draw the darkest lines of who’s in and who’s out.

Let’s talk for a moment about the scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees of the Jewish faith in Jesus’ time. These folks have often been maligned by Christian preachers as only believing in God’s Law and not in God’s grace..but that’s too simplistic an answer.  Remember that the Jewish people of Jesus’ time had lived many generations as a minority group and a captive group. Their faith was not the dominant one, and often the ruling nation discriminated against those who held the Jewish faith, and punished them in various ways, like not letting kosher meats be sold - how could they then eat any meat?  Those who became Scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees were dedicated to preserving the faith, not letting it get diluted or forgotten or blended into the dominant religion. They were diligent in their observance, and probably did ensure that the Jewish faith survived. They were the religiously observant folk of their day.

The text today focuses on  the observance of hand-washing before eating.  To our ears, we say “Duh!” That’s just good hygiene, which we learn from an early age.  Well, it didn’t used to be so! It was 1846 before even doctors began to routinely wash their hands between patients.  It was one of the Laws observed by Jewish priests, which the observant Pharisees interpreted to mean all Jews, as God called them as a priestly nation.  They were assiduous about washing hands before eating, as they were about many practices of Judaism. Evidently Jesus and his followers didn’t do this all the time, and they were seen.  To our observant religious friends, this meant that Jesus and his followers were throwing out and disregarding the whole Law of God; and were teaching others the same. If you don’t wash your hands before meals, you obviously don’t follow God.  You negate our whole faith. That’s kinda harsh, but ….

Jesus’ critique wasn’t so much that they were only following laws; rather it was that in their intensity, they had lost the love of God; in their strictness and in their observance of the minutia, their passion had switched from God to just the details.  And they now harshly judged those who did NOT “do it right.” So in their GOOD desire to preserve the faith and life of Judaism with God, they actually built walls that kept their own their people out, rather than drawing them in. (That may be too simplistic, too.)

This is not just a 1st century Jewish problem… its more a human thing, especially a stress thing, when we lose the focus and just center on the behaviors.  Its a problem in Christianity, too. We religious folk can get so heated up about certain litmus tests of Christianity, that to not fall into line with them, makes you anathema, outcast.  I have a friend named Letha who has been a significant voice for women in faith and church for most of her adult life (and she’s now 80). Like me, Letha was raised in the more fundamentalist wing of Christianity.  I will criticize the fundamentalism that I knew as confusing a zeal for certain behaviors and opinions, with a zeal for God. Letha was an accepted and desired speaker for women’s place in marriage and church while she said the accepted beliefs about man as the head of the house, and so on.  Back then, she was even sought out as she began to explore what she was hearing the Scripture say about women’s intrinsic worth and even being made in the image of God, promoting an equality before God of men and women, and advocating social change for women’s rights. (That was 25 +years ago when what we call evangelical christianity was less rigid than now.)  Letha was a recognized teacher and interpreter of Scripture - until her faith exploration of Scripture and God began to force her to look at abortion justice and then gender justice -- at which point SHE was suddenly dropped from speaking engagements, and abandoned by the same community that had once so valued her scholarship. As long as she colored inside the lines, she was okay.  But her whole life, knowledge and faith and quest for God’s truth were discounted as soon as she questioned sacred cows.

We can easily name some of those litmus test items of our current right wing of Christianity -  literal interpretation of the Bible only; no to abortion for any reason; prayer in school; 10 commandments displayed; fear of sexuality (don’t eat alone with woman if you’re married to someone else - Okay, not all are this strict); homeschooling (check); wave the American flag (check); don’t take a knee during the national anthem (check); don’t be a liberal (check); no LGBTQ persons allowed;  and others. Presbyterians value education and following the Book of Order.

Just so I’m not just critiquing others, I have my  judgemental side - I have difficulty being tolerant of intolerant persons, and especially the right wing of our faith.  I lived in Va Beach for many years, which is home to Pat Robertson and his college. I vowed to not set foot on that campus; and when groups started wanting to rent their facilities for events, I wouldn’t go.  When someone wanted to take me to their restaurant, I said let’s meet elsewhere. I refused to give money to any of his endeavors. I laughed at jokes about “pat answers” to questions. THEN I took in Billy from Kinshasa, who didn’t comprehend the religious differences here too much, and who was delighted to get hired by Robertson’s film department to translate their films into French, his native language….and until he could afford a car, I had to drive him to work…..I hated it every time.  Driving Billy to work made me break my vow to never set foot on Robertson’s land. I can get pretty angry about the way he and others portray our Christian faith - I feel like they’ve earned all of us believers that kind of holier-than-thou reputation as haters and irrational.

My chaplain supervisor flat out told me, “So you’re a bigot, too.”  That was harsh. But it made me think about it and pray about it. I can’t say I love Pat Robertson, now, but I realize that I fall into the same temptation of playing ‘holier-than-thou.’  It’s easy to fall into without noticing. In my chaplain classes, I found ways to work with other pastors whose theology was on the other end of the spectrum, just as they found ways to work with me, learning to see each other as whole people who loved God - that became the common element.

Jesus’ problem with this is not that there’s anything wrong with hand washing, but that these folks are so devoted to the outward observances, and ones they’ve made applicable to everybody through their own interpretation, that they’ve drawn lines between people and judged them unworthy; and further, their obsession with these details have overtaken their heartfelt love of God and God’s grace to all people. If you think that’s too silly for us to ever fall into, remember that at one time we judged people by the length of their hair and if their sideburns came below the earlobe.  Presbyterians often get bent out of shape if things aren’t done according to the Book of Order, while people with a vision for outreach get discouraged and slip out the door.

See, these things are not essentials of loving God; and often have nothing to do with a longing for the Divine, a seeking of our Source and our Creator, nothing to do with repentance and renewal of joy, and our freedom in Christ.  We are Presbyterians, so we do tend to like order even about how we express our ardor, our feelings. I do hope and pray that we still have our ardor, our devotion, our enjoyment of God’s abundance and God’s freedom. Because what God really wants is the love of our hearts, the relationship with us of friend and lover even, and a deep commitment to continue seeking the kindom.  The human value of love and marriage has often been an illustration of God’s relationship to us - the deep feelings, the commitment, the talking, the desire… when that’s lacking, God wants it back.

So let’s hear Jesus critique of the Scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees as an invitation to fall back in love, to work out what might be in the way, what might be taken for granted; and rekindle the fires of devotion instead of a nit-picking obedience.  AMEN.

How Do I Experience God? Trinity-B, 5/27/18

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

HOW DO I EXPERIENCE GOD ?

Trinity B, May 27, 2018                                                         Isaiah 6:1-13   

Last Sunday I showed you all this painting (SHOW) that I made with my friend Nancy, where we put all these colors into a dixie cup - not blended, just together, then upended it on the canvas here and watched what happened.  Okay, we tilted it and had some fun that way, too.  ANYWAY, the point I made, and want to restate here for Trinity Sunday, is that all the colors stayed distinct – and the fun of it is to see the motions, the flowing together, the patterns. Its not static, and the colors aren’t blended – although they move together.  Its all one painting, one pattern – and it has a lot of colors that flow together.  Like I’ve said before, I probably come down more on the side of God as One, than on the side of three separate & distinct persons.

It seems to me that this is a good illustration to try and understand the concept of that doctrine historically called The Trinity – a word never seen in the Bible, by the way, just a word chosen to describe how the faithful have tried to express their experiences of God.  Early Christians used the words Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Or, better, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.  Or functionally, God the Creator, God the Redeemer and God the Sustainer.  Evidently, those folks in the first centuries argued and argued over how this worked while still being a monotheistic faith…. People were condemned as heretics who insisted that the persons of the trinity were one in essence instead of one in substance, for example, and whether the Spirit flowed from the Father, the Son or both.  It finally was nailed down in the 4^th century.  

While not impugning the faith of our earliest forbears, & the importance it obviously had for them, it does seem to me that we can get all tied up in knots when we try to detail how God is, try to parse all the words and nail down the mystery of God and how God works, acts, thinks, whatever.  Academics and theologians like to argue those kinds of things.  There were a lot of “heresies” we had learn the names of in seminary. 

From the vantage point of 21 centuries down the road, it seems to me that: (a) trying to outline and define God is pretty much an impossible task for our human brains; (b) the main point is that even in the Bible people experienced the One God in various ways; and (c) we only have various words and metaphors to try and capture the liminal and mysterious presence and working of God in our lives and in our world.  That’s what I chose to title my sermon, “How Do I Experience God?”

Of course the personal language of how do I experience God is not to say that we make our own version of God.  We always live under the Scriptures and within the community of believers, so there are checks and balances.  HOWEVER, religious experience is personal, and is often beyond the limits of language and thought – experiences of the Divine can overwhelm us.  Some mystics say that experiences of God “ravish” us.  Finding words for these experiences is a step away from the real experience, and try as we might, the words are never adequate.  Organizing experiences into doctrines many can concur with, is the NEXT step away from the actual encounters.  So the idea of Trinity is at least the 3^rd level away from actual experiences of God.

Here’s my take on things:  God is intricate enough to come to us in as many ways as it takes to seek us out and restore us to relationship with Godself and all that is.  I mean, look at God’s self-expression in creation – can we even name all the flowers in creation?  Its boundless!!! And that’s not even getting into trees or mammals or reptiles or humans.  And that’s not even getting into biology or chemistry or quantum whatevers.  The intricacy of life is mid-boggling, as well as the magnitude of space.  If we, as humans, are complex creatures, how much more is God?  Yet the impulse of the Divine is always towards life, love, and right relationships, whether in each of us personally, or in our communities, or nations, or the whole of creation. 

Three is a nice number, and we can look around the Bible and see that people of faith talk about the spirit of God; and in our Christian scriptures, Jesus uses the Father/ Son metaphor for his relationship to God; and Jesus talks about sending the Spirit when he, Jesus, is gone.  So its easy to see three.  Yet Hebrew Scriptures also use the Husband/Wife metaphor for God and Israel; and in our Christian Scriptures its used again to try and explain Christ and the church.  Also in the Hebrew Scriptures is the figure of Wisdom, pictured and personified as a woman who calls the immature to her ways.  The apostle John uses images first said about Wisdom when he describes Jesus in his first chapter.  There’s also the Glory of God, the Shekinah, which had its own devotees in history, its own personification. The Glory or Shekinah abided in the Ark of the Covenant, which sat in the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle and then in the Temple – it was the very presence of God with Israel.  Then there’s the imagery of the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud…. Then there are the 3 men who came to Abrahm & Sarah to announce they’d have a baby; and that odd figure who wrestles all night with Jacob as he’s finally going home, and changes his name from Jacob to Israel.  And THEN, look at the names for God in the Hebrew Scriptures – Jehovah, Elohim, God of the high places, and so on.

You see, words are all we have, and they all fall short.  Human relationships are all we can compare with, and these are inadequate as well. We are always making these comparisons, which is a good thing – because the more of them we have, the fuller the picture of the Divine.  But its not like we can write a short and concise definition of God for all time.

So what difference does it all make? That’s the question of sermons – okay, given all this, so what?

Well, the concept of God as one and also three tends to be confusing – its good if we can accept it as a way to express the various experiences people have had with God, then maybe we won’t get all messed up trying to understand it in detail.  Lots of folks come to me with questions, trying to understand the trinity.  While some academics and theologians may study its origins and meanings in detail, most of us can be happy with knowing that God can come to us in many ways, and leave it there.  Understanding and defining God will never happen.  Coming to God for forgiveness and restoration is what’s important.  We experience the One God in many ways, end of sentence.   (mic drop)

Again, Judaism and Islam, among other world religious traditions, find this doctrine so close to polytheism that they often denied that Christianity is monotheistic.  The doctrine has been troublesome in dialog with other religious traditions.  We can get so caught up in explaining it that we lose the part that says God is One.  We can get so caught up in words that we forget we’re talking about religious experience, not scientific facts.

Yet when we marvel that God is able to do what it takes to bring us to life and love and right relationships, our praise and awe expand, and brings us to our knees in worship.  I am blown away that God cares enough about human folks to do all this!  That God wants and longs to be part of our lives!  That God works with us and in us; that God is born among us; that God speaks in our hearts; that God comforts us when we need that, and challenges us when we need that; that God speaks truth to us when our thinking is wrong; that God invites us to come talk together in prayer about anything; that God broadens our perspectives on who God loves.  That God can find ways to be with normal people as well as smart people; regular people as well as gifted people; people with mental handicaps; people who suffer from mental illnesses; children, adults and aged people; people in any and all human cultures; people who have lived and will live in different centuries.  God is amazing.  And God is bigger than we ever imagine.

St. Patrick used the shamrock to try and explain how God could be one and yet three in his day.  I’ve heard illustrations using an equilateral triangle; using the yolk, white and shell of the egg; or using ice, water and vapor as forms of H2O.  In the past, I’ve talked about all the persons I am as Becky – I am daughter, sister, mother, wife, grammy, pastor, friend, student, teacher….etc etc     See, we try and use what we know to explain what is actually experiential of God.  Early in my career, I used the example of the diamond crystal with many facets or faces – the light hits those facets and it burns in colors, its brilliance revealed.  I like the work of some Christian feminist theologians, who speak of God as eternally in relationship; as modeling a non-hierarchical community of equals.

The focus of God, all the parts or persons or facets or aspects – is always on people, on restoring Life and Love and right-relationships (justice), on reaching those who are far away from God, on advocating for those who are weak or powerless, and unable to advocate for themselves in this world.  The focus of God is on getting straight as to who is God and who isn’t – ie understanding that acknowledging and worshiping God is the first step of getting life right. 

That challenges us, as believer in God and followers of Christ, to align all the parts of ourselves to those same ends; all our skills talents, gifts, traits, strengths, abilities – all our life and energy – to these same ends as the Divine One we worship.  Our focus needs to be the same as God’s focus – on the need of people to know God; on the needs of ALL people for food and shelter and respect; on tending to God’s creation; on the need for justice between people; on right relationships with each other in marriages, families, communities, nations and world.  God knows how use the magnitude of God’s identity to work to reach anybody and everybody – we can be like that, too. 

The more we follow Christ, the more we pray and grow the relationship with God; then the more Christ’s image can be formed in us, and the more we can join in the work of Christ’s kingdom, where God’s will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 

AMEN.

Bad News & Good News Pentecost 2-B 6/3/18

Re. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser       

Bad News & Good News

Pentecost 2B,  June 3, 2018                                  1 Samuel 3:1-20        

The other day I read my first FB post that blames my Boomer generatio for the state of the world today.  At first I was rather cynical about it, but y’know, I suppose that happens in every succeeding generation. (I KNOW it happens in every succeeding presidency!)  My generation blamed our predecessors for being uptight about things that didn’t seem important to us; and further, not caring about things we thought were vital, like getting us out of the war in Vietnam.  We called them closed-minded, said they had muddied values and were hypocrites. So I guess I’m not surprised to see it happening again with this new generation.  In one sense, the world change rapidly these days, so the context of each generation differs. While in another sense, though, our deep values built on our Judeo-Christian heritage abide for all time, although perhaps interpreted differently through the lens of different eras.

I don’t for example, understand the life experiences that shaped those who endured two World Wars, and how living in that era formed them, because I came of age in the time of the hippies, Jesus People, civil rights demonstrations and anti-war protestors.  Although, as I age, I’ve been rethinking ideas that I’d accepted as the only possible way of looking at things.  My parents were raised through the Great Depression, but I’ve been a suburban, middle-class girl since birth.  My parents could say that they weren’t prejudiced and mean it, because they weren’t Archie Bunker; and they tried to talk politely and nicely to people. “But, you see, ‘those people’ are not like us and they prefer their own churches, and if they move in, our property values are affected.” They had no feeling that we need to learn to live together as equals. On the other hand, I and my generation admired and listened to Martin Luther King Jr at young ages, and wondered what was so bad about his vision.

I’ve lived long enough now to have watched various changes come and go in the church. When I grew up, new churches were built in middle-class neighborhoods, aimed at around 200 local members, which could support a pastor. The lots purchased by the denominations were only a few acres, meant to stay a medium size, and have parking for 1-car families.  Most wives were available during the week for women’s meetings, teaching Sunday School and other volunteering tasks.  We assumed that if we built it, they would come, and they did.  Church was part of the good, American life; men and women knew their roles; everybody had 2.4 children and Sunday Schools overflowed. Plans for bigger buildings were hatched.  Nowadays we wish we’d bought larger lots and allowed for multiple cars, we know it takes more people to support a pastor in this, and those neighborhood churches are floundering.

When I started as a preacher, spirituality was an unknown word – it sounded catholic, people said, o it sounded like spiritualism.  A mere 5 years after I was called in by the Committee on Ministry for talking about spirituality and spiritual direction, both those things became the new buzz words and the presbytery made a new committee for it & all the ‘with it’ people jumped on it.

The first time I was an Interim Pastor, I was told, “Just keep things going until the new pastor comes.” 6-7 years later that was wrong, and I needed to take the Interim Ministry training and learn the skills for Interim work, so I did. 10 years later I went to take the 2^nd week of training and was told that so much had changed that I had to take week 1 again.  So I did.  This past spring when I went to sign up for week 2, I was told the content had changed again and was now called Transitional Ministry.  But they let me into week 2, thank goodness! 

It is true that new insights come from new leaders.  They can show us where we went too far in one direction, or missed a critical understanding.  For example, for a long time we assumed people had a choice whether to be gay or straight, so we encouraged them to “choose” a more mainstream straight life. Now we know scientifically that its not a choice, and that a certain number of people are born wired that way.  A constant minority, they can no more “choose” a different orientation that anyone else can.  Now we are more welcoming – well, some of us…

Again, for a long time, it never occurred to us that new industries and their methods of dumping chemicals in the seemingly inexhaustible ocean, or the breadth of the skies, would hurt anything.  That turned out to be very wrong, and the world and all its species, including us, is suffering under the impact of those oversights, or our blindness, whether inadvertent or intentional.  And we are realizing that stewardship of the Garden of earth is part of our faith.

We should have realized, though, that any change has repercussions, and thought more deeply, like indigenous people have done; and we should have realized that its human nature to be tricky and greedy and to find ways to exploit just about anything.  If we’d read our Bibles better and remembered that sin is real, we may have made better decisions.

Our Hebrew text about the call of Samuel is about this, to me – that is, the mixed relations of one generation to the upcoming one.  Eli is an aging priest who, after a good and faithful earlier life, has not fared well as a parent or priest in his older life.  In the preceding chapter, his sons are described as scoundrels who have no regard for God or the people, and are exploiting their position as priests. Scripture also says that the word of the Lord was rare in those days – those two things go together.  Meanwhile, a poor couple from up in the hills rejoiced over a much-desired son, Samuel, and presented him to the Temple as they had promised God to do - They were faithful to their vow.  And God was already starting a new thing in the child Samuel. 

Young Samuel doesn’t recognize the voice of God that he is truly hearing; he thinks its just Eli needing something, so he goes to be helpful.  He IS responding to what he is hearing, although he mistakes its source.  Scripture still calls him a boy.  He needs the direction of the elder priest Eli to learn how to be attentive, recognize God’s voice, and listen and respond.  “If God calls you again, say ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.’”  Its like a grandparent to grandchild thing, age-wise.  Ironically, Eli still knows the LORD, even if he has not done well in restraining his sons or rebuking their errors.   Maybe Samuel is his second chance?  Maybe God is giving him another opportunity in his old age?

In a positive view of the interaction of the youth and the elder, young people can certainly hear God and discern the messages; and we elders can point them to God’s ways.  Elders can teach them to nurture their gifts, or how to work in the church organization; elders can pass along the wisdom gained by hard knocks and lessons; elders can share stories of how to walk the path of faith.  How to listen, how to care, how to discern the Scriptures, and support for the struggles.  How to test visions, and carry them out.  That’s the relationship functioning at its best.

At its worst, the elder generation can so hold on to their old ways that the new messages are stifled or ignored or shamed  - and resist youth’s message so hard that the Spirit of God is silenced or quenched; and the youth can be squelched, and the word of God lost. 

This story of Eli and Samuel is a mix, as so often life is.  Unfortunately, the message young Samuel hears from God is not an encouraging word… Because Eli has let all kinds of bad practices go on in the Temple, he and his family have incurred judgement, and will be wiped out.      Whew!  What a message for a young boy to hear!  He doesn’t want to reveal it – its bad news.

  Just so, the younger people in our country are speaking up to us about the bad news of school shootings affecting their lives, and judging us for how our generation has not dealt with certain problems.  They are looking for solutions to the mass of garbage floating in our oceans, that we’ve allowed to happen. They are naming where we have failed them. My generation asked for more authenticity, a good thing; this generation seems to be asking for more responsibility for life together, also a good thing.  It seems that people can’t get everything right at the same time.

To return to the story, Eli actually does know God and God’s voice.  What has happened in his life to bring him to this point? For all his – what - passivity? Fear?  Purposeful ignorance? Laziness?  for all his failures, he still knows God, and he is man enough to acknowledge that Samuel has heard God rightly.  Another prophet has recently come and told Eli the same thing.  ‘It is the Lord,’ Eli says. He knows the bad news is God.  Then he says, ‘Let God do what God intends.’ And at that point, I have to wonder why Eli doesn’t repent, change his ways and seek forgiveness - other groups and people in Scripture do just that, and are restored.  Like the people of Ninevah, for example.  Has Eli’s passivity even affected his faith? Has he given up trying? How did he get like this?

I admit to a lot of sympathy for Eli as the elder person.  Hard things happen in life, and many are not outcomes of bad choices, although some are.  I’ve known the reality of being exhausted trying to do right, holding on to what I know, and ready to give up.  I can imagine how difficult it would be to have my beloved children making horrible decisions – its hard work to learn how to not be an enabler.  So this story challenges me – am I like Eli?  Have there been truths I’ve known or visions I’ve been given that I’ve grown too tired to pursue?  Have I grown weary of well-doing, as Paul names it?  Have I abdicated my vision because things got difficult, and push-back too hard to deal with any more?  Well, yes.  Changes move so slowly, and there’s always lots of criticism and anger thrown around. In a way I have given up on some points – I still hold them, I’ve just stopped pushing. Will I be faithful to the promises I made, like Samuel’s parents, or collapse & be judged, like Eli? 

I find myself saying that at least I will listen for the emerging voices of the younger persons of faith and support them, help be the bridge for their vision.  That sounds noble – until I read this story of Eli and wonder if perhaps his tiredness of struggling is like mine, and I have given up too soon, and just moved my hope to the next generation.  Have I given up the struggle of the desert when we’re actually just one mile from the oasis?

So I hear a variety of messages in this story of the aging Eli and the young Samuel.  There’s a message of judgement on the failures even of a person who yet does still know God; and even recognizes it in Samuel. 

Then there’s the message of hope that God is still working for us even in raising up Samuel.  Certainly we as the older generations want to encourage the new generation of the faithful, and not stifle the Spirit in them.  While not everything new is necessarily good by virtue of its newness, not everything old is stellar, either, by virtue of being tradition.  There’s a give and take, a listening and a welcoming as well as an appreciation of wisdom handed down.  There’s a balance somewhere.  I hope that as a congregation and as a whole Church, we are open to discernment, looking to our own responsibilities while also listening for what God is doing. AMEN.

Why Do You Want To Do Things Like the World? Pentecost 3-B

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

Why do you want to do things like the world ?

Pentecost 3B,  June 10, 2018                                       Mark 3: 20-35 & 1 Samuel 8:4-20 

After I graduated seminary, accepted my first call and was ordained, I finally got into the real pastoring, and figuring out what was authentic for me in terms of my inner calling, what was seminary-speak, and how to live in my small towns.  All of us do this, pastors or not – there’s always this inner struggle to be authentic about our growing faith and what it asks of us, while still living and working and interacting and relating.  And without people thinking we’re crazy! Samuel tried to talk the Hebrew people out of following the world in having kings instead of just letting God lead.  Jesus’ own family and religious group worried he was crazy, with the things he was doing and saying for God. The apostle Paul wrestled with this as he tried to guide the early Christians in how to both live their faith and not get thrown in jail by the Romans.  So our struggle to live our faith is not a new one.  

In the little town where my first church was, the local clergy group invited me in (which some clergywomen have not found to be the case everywhere).  There was one youngish pastor in town from a more fundamentalist church, who, when he was introduced to me, felt the need to put me in my place by saying, “Oh, I was raised Presbyterian, but I found God in college and was saved, and became Baptist.”  You know how sometimes you don’t get a good comeback line until you get home?  This time I got it right away…. I answered, “Huh – I was raised Baptist, but found God’s grace and joined the Presbyterians.”  He looked disconcerted.  Good – I meant him to be, thinking he had the right to tell me Presbyterians didn’t know God!

See, I was raised fundamentalist, and I remember the feeling that we were the only ones who got the gospel right; and that it was our Christian duty, therefore, to point out people’s mistakes.  After all, we had the highest motivation – we had to make them see they needed to repent, so they wouldn’t go to Hell.  Evil had to be confronted and confronted boldly, even if we were quaking inside.  It was for their good, so if we had to be abrupt or short with them, so be it.  If they rejected us, they were really rejecting God.  We were suffering for our faith, like the saints and martyrs. Later I realized most people just thought us arrogant and opinionated, and didn’t listen anyway. 

Although I disagree with a) our often offensive method, b) the literalism we chose to defend, and c) that we were the only ones right; I do see some strength in the fact that we sought to live following what we believed, were willing to be different, and take the consequences.  Yes, its pretty arrogant to assume we knew the only truth of God, and there’s some kind of glee in defending our belligerence & telling others that they’re wrong.  Its kind of a power trip, too.  

However, what this posture DID give me was a strong backbone, will power, or ego strength - I followed what I believed even against the popular ideas and peer pressure.  We read those verses in Scripture like, “Regard it all joy…when people revile you and persecute you in my name,” and we were proud that people said negative things about us – we were suffering for Jesus.  Its so tempting – and so justifying – to think we’re up there with the holy ones.  Instead of being jerks….

Too bad we didn’t learn better relational skills, and too bad our suffering was not for Jesus’ higher teachings. We took certain precepts and pounded them as the be all and end all of Christianity, like many of the right-wing believers are doing so visibly today.  I understand that mindset – I used to share it.  Now I see the things they’re fighting about as a mere shell of the deep teachings of Jesus; and it reduces Jesus and Christianity to a set of simple rules that don’t reflect of the depth love of Jesus, nor his criticism of a dominant culture. 

So theirs answer to the question posed by our texts today – how do we live our faith in Jesus and get along in the world at the same time– with a rigid, confrontational style.  Actually, Jesus’ style was pretty confrontational, and counter-cultural.   Jesus continually shows how he disregards the conventions of his day as unworthy of God, even against God, and promotes a view of human community that doesn’t work well with imperialism, and maybe even capitalism.  Jesus’ realm of God is radially egalitarian and welcomes all people with no distinctions; Jesus’ realm asks us to give up our own comfort and ease so others can simply live; it asks a lifestyle of community and honor of one another; and it demands that loyalty to God must supersede any other loyalty – to nation, to king, to success, to wealth, to whatever.  Jesus’ realm, in the most part, requires a 180 degree turn from the way things usually are.   That’s what “repent” means, by the way, to do a 180, turn around and head another direction.

Jill Duffy, editor of the Outlook, who you know I often quote, wrote in her comments on this passage, “Jesus is offensive. He comes to make clear that our loyalty to God trumps all other loyalties, including those we've long held sacred. Jesus is offensive. He tells the nice, respected, revered religious leaders they are not only misguided, they are instruments of evil. Jesus is offensive. He comes like a thief in the night to upend the rule of those long in power. Jesus is offensive. He gets close to crowds, calls tax collectors, touches the unclean and eats with sinners. Jesus is offensive. He speaks the truth to those in power, to us, to all. Jesus is offensive because he refuses to go along to get along, to bow down to long-accepted norms, to allow cultural or familial expectations to thwart his mission of binding up the broken hearted and liberating those long held captive.”

This is the gospel of Mark’s picture of Jesus –he is the strong man coming as a thief to take back the world for God’s realm.  He overturns the ways to thinking that have taken the whole message of liberation, justice, family, religion, civility, established order, home, church, country and economy and turned it into something tame that benefits the themselves, the elite. People hear the criticism inherent in his actions.  They are so challenged that they say he’s crazy – or worse, he’s working for the devil.  His family hears the murmurs and worries, and goes to restrain him.  And that’s why the larger population and its leaders conspire to get him killed. 

So I have to give the fundamentalists a little credit for being willing to be different, although I take issue with what they consider the important values of our faith.  Most of us would rather be kinda innocuous, not embroiled in controversy, keeping our heads down, go along to get along, be seen as nice people and not weird ones.  It can get to the point that we believers are not all that different from the main in what we value and strive for, and what we accept as, well, that’s the way it is. That’s business as usual. That’s the way things go.  I like to say, “There’s a line somewhere,” like between being seen as crazy jerks and giving away our Christian identity.  Does our following of Christ make any difference in our behavior, our values, our living?

In the letters that the apostle Paul writes to those first churches, he is thinking through how the Christian community ought to live those precepts that got Jesus killed, but in a way that won’t get us all killed.  How much can we be different in following Jesus’ teachings and how much can we still be Roman citizens? Or a typical American citizen? It’s a real struggle, it takes a real discernment before we compromise the very gospel Jesus taught.  

Someone used as a book title, How Shall We Then Live? – a good title, and one we all have to wrestle with.  We Presbyterians have certain ways we do things, but that’s organizational and mechanical.  Actually, we Presbyterians have some deep insights about the living of faith that is expected of believers.  Being Presbyterians, we’ll probably debate most ideas, but …. Its worth the effort and clarify what will identify Christians as Christians.  I’ve been wanting to do this for myself, too, so I’ll share a couple things that are forming in my thoughts and feelings. They’re not in any order yet…. Today I’ll talk about Christians knowing our sacred texts and our relationship with God in prayer.

Believers in God need to learn our sacred literature, the stories of our faith forbears.  If we learn them as kids, that’s good – we have the outlines and some details in our minds, and hopefully some good verses memorized.  BUT!!!! Our knowledge of these stories can’t stay at the 5^th grade level, which they will, if the adult believers don’t illustrate how to interpret, discern and listen to the deeper truths in them.  I say 5^th grade, because that’s when my oldest got bored with Sunday School because, as he said, “All they ever did was color pictures of animals going on the ark and everyone knows that wasn’t true anyway.”  I shared this story with a Rabbi friend, and he grinned and said, “Don’t you love it when they get to that point?”  Uh, yeah, I was kind of taken aback…but my rabbi friend is right.  See, in school my son was studying old civilizations and Greek or Roman mythology, which he knew was not literally true.  And he linked Christianity to it.  His brain was ready for a deeper level of truth, the truths of God’s preservation of a people to carry the story, the importance of the symbol of the ark throughout time, the truth that many civilizations have flood stories and there just might have been an actual big flood of some kind.  He was ready to go beyond the literal, and no one was showing him anything but rote memorization and blind acceptance.  Hmmmm…

So many adults are like a teacher I enjoyed who taught the science of the Big Bang – he was able to see the mystery and wonder of that level of science; he even was able to see the symbolic beauty and meaning in creation stories of other cultures, like some Native American stories of creation.  But when he got to Christianity’s Adam and Eve in the garden, all he could see was the literal level he’d had to memorize as a child, and now rejected as too simplistic.  Too simplistic????? Our creation stories are wonderful and deep stories of our connection to God and creation, worthy of reflection and meditation as to just what is taught about who we are and who God is, and the universe God has set us in.  But this man was stuck, and couldn’t move into an adult relationship with this story, although he could with others.  We’ve emphasized the wrong things in our faith development & kept faith at a level of either believing literally or believing nothing.

In my experience, Scripture can be read at any age and any level and still have meaning.  Scripture can be read 200 times and still reveal more truth to us – because God’s Spirit works in them and in me through those words.  I can read Scripture now in my 60s, knowing more about what life throws at us, and hear more levels than I did in my 20s – it still speaks, God still uses it to examine my heart.

Knowing the Scripture, while important, is not the whole picture, though – our faith is in God, and our own personal relationship with God needs to be cultivated in prayer and meditation, worship, community, and private time. Our parents’ deep faith needs to be wrestled with personally, and become your own deep faith.  A writer (John Westerhoff,,I believe), on faith development, said that “Faith is more caught than taught.” And he used the word “osmosis” to ponder how a person learns to practice faith through being around other people of faith, through absorbing the feeling, the culture, the practices of thought and devotion.  We can learn facts and details in our head, yet it comes to be our own practice through engagement with other believers.   Community is so important -  gathering, worshipping, praying, working. Its just as vital to just show up and be here as it is to wrestle in prayer by ourselves. 

I used to come to my prayer time trying to say things piously and hiding behind my more noble inclinations.  I was really just fooling myself, because God knew my thought and my heart desires anyway.  Its not wrong to desire a holy outlook on things – but its important to know when we don’t have it, and why.  We have views that we aspire to, that challenge us – and we also have to know where we actually are.  We don’t need to fear that God will be shocked, or that God will go away if we’re angry.  God has heard it all before, and God can stand it and stay with us.  God isn’t someone we need to fear to be honest with.   

God is concerned in every detail of our lives, too – not just holy-sounding things, but who we’re angry with, for example, or our concerns about our bodies, or what we do with our money, or how we wish we were more attractive, or how we are doing in school.  However, God isn’t a Divine vending machine, where we put in our dollar prayer and get a pony.  Prayer is simple, but not simplistic.  At this stage of my life, I go ahead and tell God what I’d like to see happen, because God knows anyway…. And sometimes I’m challenged as to whether it’s a worthy ask, and sometimes I need to  further define what I truly seek.  Then I go back in prayer later if things go a different way, and talk about how I feel about what did happen.  This is exploring WITH God.

So I’ve talked about two biggies – there’s more I want to ponder together.  I would really enjoy talking more about our practice and development of faith with you if you’re interested or intrigued, so let me know.  I think church is so much more than just budgets and policies, although we need those things to structure our being together.  Our faith in God and how we live here on earth actually the point.  AMEN.

Seeing Resurrection Through Tears Easter-B 4/1/18

Seeing Resurrection Through Tears

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

Easter -B   4/1/18     John 20:1-18

Christ is risen!

Answer: Christ is risen indeed!

I looked up children’s books about Easter on Amazon to send to my granddaughter – there are lots of them out there.  There’s a cute one done according to the Berenstain Bears, Pete the cat, a cute mouse, Little Critter, Pinkalicious (!)  and more.

This morning we’re going to look at the Easter story according to Mary of Magdala, the first person who comes to the tomb, and the first person to see the risen Jesus – and actually, the first one to tell people about it. 

I love Mary of Magdala  – she’s gotten a bad rap from sometime early in Christianity when someone decided she was the woman aught in adultery, although that woman is not named, and anyway, she was forgiven.  Magdalene does not mean adulterer or any worse word – it’s a CITY, the city where she was from.  Evidently she’s one of those women that traveled with the disciples and, as last week’s text said, provided for them.  I mean, we have this picture of Jesus and the 12 men traveling through the desert from town to town as a male band.  Actually, women traveled with Jesus, too, using their money to feed and clothe everyone, cooking and sewing and all, and listening to Jesus as well.  Maybe some of the disciples had wives, it never says.  Certainly, Jesus’ message appealed to everyone.  More than likely, Mary was a woman of means who turned to Jesus.   I mean, Jesus fed a crowd with fishes and loaves, but that’s just one day – he ministered for 3 years!

We all know that Jesus’ body was laid in a tomb gifted to him by a follower, right before the Sabbath started, so all the burial rituals could not be completed.  That’s why Mary comes early on the day after the Sabbath, ie Sunday (which is why Christians now worship on Sunday, the first day of the week).  She brings the traditional herbs and all, a final gift to Jesus of laying him out properly. We can imagine, having had to do difficult things ourselves, that she is still incredibly sad and confused, and yet finding some solace in the thought of this last ceremony. 

People all used to do this for their loved ones, and at their homes.  The traditions and ceremonies around death and important to the grieving process, and eventually help us head towards healing.  Nowadays we relegate that kind of humble work to undertakers and have other traditions.  When I was a kid, I was scared of dead bodies, and the knowledge that this is our common human end.  Now that I’m older and have been with people while they mysteriously move from a warm, breathing human, and into death, there’s nothing scary about bodies anymore, especially the body of those we have loved. 

So Mary comes to the tomb, the place of death, and perhaps we can imagine she is not also sad, but also wondering what will happen to his followers.  You may remember that it was a scary time to be a follower of Jesus – Peter had been scared to admit he knew Jesus, and the disciples gathered behind a closed door.   Mary sees the rock that sealed the tomb now rolled to the side, and the tomb empty.  We can imagine that she is totally freaked, and thinks his body has been moved or stolen – and perhaps even something gross done to it…. Our imagination can take us terrible places.  But even our imaginations can’t take us to RESURRECTION – that just isn’t something that happens on the human plane. 

So she runs and gets some other folks, and stands there crying while they look inside the tomb.  We might imagine this empty tomb is yet another shock – her friend Jesus was arrested,  condemned,  killed – and now his body has disappeared!  I know I’d be crying….I’d be numb.

Mary just can’t leave the tomb, even though the others go.  She can’t leave yet, she’s still weeping and confused.  And just in this terrible moment, someone says something to her – she thinks he’s a gardener. They’re in a garden, that’s logical.  Of course she doesn’t expect to see Jesus…  would we? 

Yet it is at this place of loss, in the pain and confusion of human grief and incomprehension - it is through her helpless tears that Mary recognizes the new Jesus, the risen Christ.  And they talk.  Can you imagine her absolute amazement and confusion?  Finally, she returns to the others with the totally weird testimony, “I have seen the Lord!”

It seems to be uniquely true for all of us, that it is at our most dire times, our deepest crises, our losses and failures, our time of grief and weeping, that as we wrestle with where God is in the midst of this chaos --- we somehow see God anew, we see new aspects of God, we find an expanded vision of God’s self.  I started to write that this is not my favorite way for my faith and vision to grow.  It certainly isn’t the easiest or the most pleasant.  But on the other hand, isn’t it important that God is there in our very worst times???? 

I’ve named many of my awful times as ‘times of disillusionment’ ----  things weren’t like I’d thought or expected – or even believed.  God, as I knew God up to that point, didn’t seem to be there.  One day it hit me that in order to be disillusioned, I must have been living in an illusion to start with!  It hurts to be disillusioned, to shed those illusions – yet they ARE illusions and actually need to go.  God IS there – it was my expectation that fell short, it was my understanding that was incomplete.  Suddenly I see God in a new way; I learn; my faith grows.  It seems that I learn more of God’s reality in my soul, at times of weeping. 

Yes, we know that our faith benefits and grows from mountaintop experiences like good conferences, meaningful retreats, or hearing great preachers that challenge and fill our spirit.  The year I attended our General Assembly and saw this whole hall of displays of the missions we Presbyterians do when we work together – that was both humbling and exhilarating at the same time.  And the large worship services, hearing hundreds of people singing together, taking communion in a convention hall packed with Christ-followers – my spirit overflowed with joy.  God was there.

Isn’t it also good to trust that God is there is our lowest points, too?  And isn’t it good to trust that God is the God of new and unexpected life? Weeping might be the best response to some of the things life throws at us, when we find ourselves standing by the place of loss like Mary.  Yet our God, who created all that is around us as well our very human selves, also is a God who can create things out of our imagining. 

Theologically speaking, God is Life and Being.  God’s mysterious name given in the Scripture is variously translated as, “I am that I am,” or, “I will be what I will be.”  Its some form of the verb “to be,” anyway, so God’s name encompasses being itself; the creative power or energy of life.  Hildegard of Bingen spoke of God as the greenness; my teacher Matthew Fox referred to God as “isness.”  Others have tried to express God philosophically as the Ground of Being, the Logos or Word.  All of these ideas, in the 60s expression, ‘blow our minds.” 

The truth is, where God is, life is.  God creates anew.  God is the power in creation, and God’s spirit in us is always moving us towards healing – healing of our souls, healing of past hurts, healing from addictions and other things that damage us.  The power of new life springing up is God.  Of COURSE God will do a new thing, and Jesus will be raised in a new kind of life, a kind of life that we all who follow Jesus will share.  Death is never the last word where God is concerned.   Life is always pushing out, pushing forward, despite setbacks and hardships ….. and even despite mortality.  That makes my mind swirl – God made all the mysteries & complexities we humans are still discovering…So it makes sense, doesn’t it? - that God could create even stuff beyond this.  God is alive in ways we can’t understand, and God is almost out of the realm that our brains can comprehend…  

However, we can comprehend this:  God holds the power of Life and New Life.  Death does not defeat the Life of God, nor the Love of God.  Life wins.  God wins. Sometimes we have to affirm that through our tears, like Mary at the tomb.  And then we are privileged to see the power of the God of life burst any bonds. 

Christ is risen.

Christ is risen indeed.