Seeds - sermon for March 25, 2012

I have been working on this for days now, and then a new realization came and I threw out the old versions.  That is the way it is with God.  You have to be willing to throw out, throw away or part with things of this world – even if it is just your own ideas or ideals in order to watch something new and awesome grow.  Jesus gives us the analogy of the wheat to show us this.  The wheat grows and produces fruit, but and only when it is buried, died and is gone from this world.  We are each one piece of that fruit and when we are willing to let go of our own selfishness.  We can only share what God has given us, our own kernel of wheat, when we can let go of our egos so that we can get out of our own way.  Then and only then can we can watch God’s love grow in amazing ways.

Originally the entire body of this sermon was about making hard choices.  It seems like I have been seeing them lately combined with a need for patience in my own life and in other people’s lives as well.  I realized yesterday though that hard choices aren’t the only thing this passage is talking about.  Yes, sometimes we have hard choices just as Jesus did.  He tells us that he could ask to be relieved of his duty to die on the cross.  He could ask for it to go away and it would, but he is choosing to go forward for the glory of God.  We have choices like this – things we know are going to be hard, but we go forward because we know God is leading us in it.  Sometimes we just have so many things on our plates and we don’t know what choice to make – that is another type of hard choice.  But if we let Jesus be our guide and ask his help we can do it. We can do all things for the glory of God. 

Yesterday I had a meeting regarding conference in the morning and then we could choose to stay and volunteer in Middleburgh’s flood recovery area.  I had not had very much family time with my entire family lately.  I have a ton of homework to do – and of course an assignment was “tweaked” after I had my reading day so now the pile is growing.  I know volunteering is a good thing, but I had these other equally good things to do that would also be good and for God.  This was a hard choice.  I knew what I should do, but I really wanted to get some of that work done and squeeze in family time.   Finally I decided if no one needed my help at either of the two major sites I could just go home.  I decided to let God lead me.  The first did not and I have to tell you I was relieved.  I thought I was getting out of the hard choice here and I would only have to go home to make a hard choice there – family time or homework. When I got to the second site, I realized they needed me.  I spent a very interesting afternoon yanking wires out of a previously flooded home.  My arms ache, I was filthy, and tired, but I know without a doubt that I had the privilege of experiencing one of those moments  - one of those moments when I buried a seed and didn’t get to do what I thought I wanted to do in order to what God wanted me to do.

I met a woman whose husband has back problems.  She owns a business and a home that were flooded.  Her home was a small home that they had just completely gutted and redone 8 years ago.  She was quiet and did not say a lot of her experience – I think she may already have done that.  She did chuckle a few times at our corny jokes and banter and she did share snippets of her experience.  Her gratefulness for church people, how many meals she ate at the Methodists, and Catholic meal sites, difficulty with insurance companies, losses of pictures, and Christmas decorations.  At the end of the day, I asked if I could pray with her.  We did and I experienced God.  I received a hug that had hope and gratefulness combined better than words ever could. I know that I did not do much. I will not be back next weekend as we have life plans as usual, but that in that moment I did what God wanted me to do to help her.  I also know I will be back to the volunteer site again, and we truly helped her and gave her a little more hope to keep going. 

We have to be willing to give up our egos, our wants, our selves sometimes in order to truly follow God.  It isn’t a onetime deal. It isn’t a checklist that you can complete; it is something that you have to work at. It is something you have to be in conversation with God about.  It is a daily choice on how to live.

That is what Jesus is calling us to.  Make a choice. Decide how you are going to live.  Are you going to take your grain of wheat and hold it close?  Bury it with you, or are you going to allow it out of your control.  To go into the ground and be planted so that it can produce 30, 60, or even a 100 more grains? 

It is time for us to stop putting ourselves on the top of the to-do list and start letting God control the to-do list.  How are you going to do that today?  How are you going to do it this week?  Do you need to focus on connecting with God, praying, meditating?  Do you need to focus on doing one unselfish act a week?  Could practice some pray time and allow God to speak quietly to your heart? Will you listen?

My Call

People ask me about my "call".  Every time they do I picture a phone ringing and God being on the other side.  "Hello God here, today I would like you to do...."  Wouldn't that be nice if that was the way it worked?

 I actually had, and still have a difficult time putting to words my experience, not because I am not sure I was called, but because I have vivid memories of other calls that did not seem to come from God.  I remember the Waco, Texas incident - watching in horror while people were killing each other.  I remember the horror stories of those who had left the cult before hand.  It was all done in the name of God.  I have vivid memories of people claiming to preach God's word and preaching hate.  I sat in a Bible study at Siena offered by a protestant outside group. The man became angry when I didn't read the passage the same way - I was told I didn't know what I was talking about and I could absolutely not read it that way.  Yet I knew my understanding wasn't completely off base - I just didn't' have all the words he did to prove it.  I heard and saw groups preaching about saving the unborn child while killing the father, husband, doctor who preformed abortions.  These images do not resonant with my call.  The hatred I hear in the voices of exclusion in the name of God is not my call.  Yet, I have also met very devoted people who try to live out God's words who still carry these prejudices as well as other ones.  I know them to be trying to be Christians and working at it just as I am.   I know I am limited with my own set of passions and prejudices and I don't want them to be misconstrued as the work of God or in God's name, when they are nothing else but my human failings.  

So with this as my back drop, with the jokes and jeers of my friends and family still in my ears regarding the hypocrisy in Christianity.  With my background in science and empirical data and many hours trying to prove things in a lab I hear God.  With my own  shortcomings and with the skeptical voices of my scientific friends resonating in my heart and mind I feel drawn to God.  I feel a peace that comes from no where and everywhere.  I have read the scriptures and I have looked at the time period and I have begun to understand Jesus's radical love.  The kind of love that would crush all of the falsehoods and that can allow you to escape your own narrow mindedness.  I have had amazing conversations with Bible study groups and pastors.  I have prayed and asked God to help me in my understanding.  When I ran up against a wall of my own bias I asked God to help me understand and see the truth.  Help me understand the words I read because they don't reflect the love and understanding I got from prayer and meditation.  It was amazing - I wrestled for months in some cases, years in others and still do with others, but I am open.  I didn't have my mind made up before hand of what God was going to help me understand but I was open to it.  I was blown away.  God put people in my life whom I never imagined I would meet and have theological discussions with.  I read books that I could have only found by others recommending them and I learned how slippery the concrete Bible truly is.

I also have at points experienced a direct understanding of something I was to do.  In prayer one day about six years ago I was praying in the Ames church and knew without hesitation that I was being asked to be a pastor.  Something I felt completely uneducated enough to do, as well as inadequate in every regard.  I didn't have enough anything to do this job, but the pure joy that came with the revelation made me know there was no turning back.  I did not describe this to anyone but my husband and eventually my best friend for many years.  It sounded crazy to me.  This was the kind of stuff other people who did crazy things said.  This was the kind of thing I had heard from those crazy people on tv who had tainted God.   I did not want anyone to judge me based on that.  I didn't want them to stop hanging out with me or talking to me because I was too "Holy", or that I was going to  turn all "Jesus freak" on them and no longer hang out, have a glass of wine or just be me.  I was afraid of the expectations to be perfect.  I was afraid of tainting God's name and love as so many before me had.  How do you talk about your call when it is buried in fear?

I did it slowly.  I talked about my call with my best friend and partner who helped me to listen, to understand and to step back.  I took classes on the Bible without telling anyone for a long time that not only was I interested in what the Bible really said, but because I knew I needed to build some self confidence to answer my call.  I experienced a strong resistance to the idea of women pastors, I heard much hate in the name of God proclaimed and I prayed.  God how can I do this?  Why me? I am the most ill equipped person possible.  Besides I had a tendency to curse outside of school, and my shortcomings compose a rather long list instead of a short one.  Even now I find myself not being as patient or understanding with my kids.  I yell, I cry and I loose my temper too.  I am a work in progress, but it took me a while to understand that we all are.

In these experience though I learned, that is exactly why God was calling me.  I have to turn over my shortcomings to God and depend on God for help.  I have to make sure people know me as a person - not as a Holy person.  I have to admit when I screw up and wait on God a lot.  I have to speak the truth as it is revealed to me understanding it is revealed to others differently.  Most importantly though I learned that God not only speaks through the Bible but though nature, through friendship and most often for me, through people.  If I am struggling with something or think I have my mind made up God will send me somebody to rock my world and tear apart my biases if I am willing to get to know them.  God speaks to me through relationships, friendships, conversations and discussions.  God wakes me up with thoughts I can't get out of my head and I know they are from God because I would love to get them out of my head and have a "normal" day. 

This is my call.  My call is to be real.  To help other people be real.  To know that God loves you even when you loose your temper, when your nasty or short sited.  That we are called to be members of the body of Christ but we are not Christ and need to cut each other some slack.  That our concepts of God should be shaped by reading the Bible, understanding the culture at the time, understanding our culture and our personal experiences with God.  This is what I am called to do.  Just be me.

Questions

When I was a teacher I asked my students questions and lead them to discover their own understandings of things.  I didn't just ask the questions I knew the answers to, but the hard ones with no real answers.  I miss that.  I haven't figured out how to do that in a sermon and actually have people participate in the act of thinking about them.  I do it in Bible Study - but not everyone comes.  So where do you ask the important questions?  The questions that have no answers but need to be asked?  Why do we travel the roads we do in life?  Where did you see God today?  If you are over run with frustration and anger have you prayed today?  What have you done today strictly for God with no self interest involved?  Did you reach out to one person with an act of unconditional kindness.  I am not talking about strangers, but people you see everyday?  What social justice issues would Jesus be fighting?  Who are those who live on the fringe of society and need our attention?  Our love? Our Compassion?  How do we truly grow deeper in relationship with God?  How do I know when God is listening, or answering?  How much is too  much me, and not enough God? Well I could probably keep going but I am interested in your questions and your answers.  What do you think?

Ponderings on children and God

As I was on my way home this evening I was considering an independent study in interfaith relations and the Christian church. I was also thinking of my children riding in the back seat.  The revelation that we are truly God's children came to me as I remembered my son earlier in the day sitting on my lap and wrapping his arms around me as his sister approached proclaiming loudly and in no uncertain terms that I was his momma and not anybody elses. He threw in a few shoves for good measure as I tried to calm them down.  My daughter walked away unphased and I explained to my son that this was not appropriate behavior and that I was her mommy too.

The correlation between my son (C) and some Christians I have met blew me away on the way home.  There are some Christians that wrap their minds around God and proclaim God to be theirs and theirs alone.  They believe that it is completely their right to proclaim who God is not only in relation to them but to others as well.  They do so loudly and sometimes violently as C did in trying to push his sister (A) away.  Then God who loves them just as much as the others has to gently remind them that their behavior is not all right and that they can not proclaim what is God's mind.

This is how I understand interfaith relations.  God is so big and so wondrous, that my puny mind can not wrap its self around the entirety of God.  I can not proclaim that my understanding of God is the only understanding out there.  I can not pretend to know God's mind nor can I deny that I see the divine in people who are not Christians.  There are things I can do however.  I can reach out to others in love.  I can recognize where God is working in them and in their faith, and I can learn something more about my faith through it.  I can be made new each day in the Lord when I simply ask questions and try not to limit what God can do.  The only limitations on God working in my life are those I set, and only God knows the master plan.

Spirituality of the Psalms by Walter Brueggemann Book Review

This is a book review that I completed this semester.  I am including it because it was a really good book that challenges how we read the Psalms as well as how we deal with bad stuff happening in the Christian faith.  In other words it is not just for seminary students - it would be great for a Bible study group.

            Spirituality of the Psalms by Walter Brueggemann is a very insightful argument for re-evaluating both how one views the psalms as well as how one views society and how people function within it. This brief, yet poignant book offers a clear and practical way of understanding and using the psalms in ministry to people in a society in crisis. 

Brueggemann proposes that for the most part many of the psalms (not all) fit into a cycle of orientation, disorientation and new orientation groups.  These groups are based upon the seasons of human life cycles.  Brueggemann describes it as “a movement from one circumstance to another, changing and being changed, finding ourselves surprised by a new circumstance we did not expect, resistant to a new place, clinging desperately to the old circumstance,”[1] These seasons of life are not chronological in nature but episodic.  We experience our orientation – progress forward in life attempting to fulfill God’s will.  We experience periods of loss, oppression, transgression and feel lost or abandoned by God and this is a period of disorientation.  Finally out of that pain comes new orientation where we celebrate a new growth given to us and blessed by God. 

Brueggemann proclaims “The psalms are profoundly subversive of the dominant culture, which wants to deny and cover over the darkness we are called to enter.  Personally we shun negativity.  Publicly we deny the failure of our attempts to exercise control.”[2] He proposes that in our world of modern sensibilities and efforts to control so much of our lives we have made complaints to God or about God, life or circumstances taboo.  With the economy as it is, and many people in the midst of pain, anger, loss, or despair it leaves very little for them to resonate with if we remove all the anger, frustration, and pain from our religious conversations.  Although he does not say it, it reminds me of yet another reason our younger generations cannot seem to find a home in the church.  They are searching for honest conversations about God and the life that they know.  We have removed that with many churches’ presentation of the psalms. These are the periods to have open and frank discussions with God and each other, which are expressed by the psalms in a very tangible and real way.  From these real struggles and putting voice to pain God intercedes.  God listens, responds and begins a new thing.

            Surprisingly, Brueggeman makes a case for the psalms as being very therapeutic.  They are a way for us to heal and begin anew.  They are also a place for us to see that disorientation is necessary in order for us to work towards social justice and be aware of the systems we function in. “Thus these psalms make the important connection; everything must be brought to speech, and everything brought to speech must be addressed to God, who is the final reference for all of life.”[3]  In this way the psalms are our version of talk therapy.

            Brueggemann’s book would be wonderful for pastors to assist them in using psalms thoughtfully in the communal life of liturgy in the congregation, and also using them personally with individuals in their various cycles of orientations with God.  Brueggemann gives you not only a framework for viewing the psalms but a lens in which to view them for real pastoral care.  The psalms help people build real relationships with God instead of superficial proclamations that do not touch their Spirit and their doubts. I would also suggest it with a small group Bible study who really want to grapple with God working in the midst of those periods of disorientation.  It could provide them comfort and the opportunity to begin to discuss those periods of disorientation and looking for a new orientation.  Due to the very theological vernacular I would not suggest it to laity to read independently without a discussion group.

Reference:

Brueggemann, W. Spirituality in the Psalms . Mineapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2002.

Kindle ebook.

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[1]Brueggemann, W. Spirituality in the Psalms . Mineapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2002. Chapter 1, Kindle ebook location 150 of 693

[2] Ibid, Chapter 1, Kindle ebook location 56 of 693

[3] Ibid, Chapter 1, Kindle ebook location 289 of 693

Introductions

Welcome to my blog.  I am very new at this but after a few requests for my sermons have decided to post them here for anyone interested in reading them.  Mind you I am attempting to listen to what God is telling me to share, but it is definitely tainted with my own personal lens of call, experience, and God working in my life - it is not absolute or the only truth.  It is a truth that I see revealed.  Let me know what you think and what would be helpful as we go along and we will learn together.
Thanks,
Missy