Something New

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23.     Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

‘This people honors me with their lips,

but their hearts are far from me;

in vain do they worship me,

teaching human precepts as doctrines.’

You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

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There is a movie that came out in 1998 called Pleasantville – remember it?  It was a silly concept about time travel.  Don Knotts played a magical TV repairman, so that gives you an idea of how silly.

Two teenage kids, David and Jennifer, are leading fairly unpleasant lives in late-1990’s America.  They’re coping with the complications that confront middle class youths: social status and fitting in, drug and alcohol use, parents who have their own troubles and are mostly unavailable to their kids.  Each of them is coping in their own way, but David seems mildly depressed and spends most of his time watching reruns of an old 1950’s sitcom, Pleasantville.  It’s a “Leave It to Beaver” kind of program, and it just seems to David that life is better in Pleasantville, so he uses it as an escape from his own life.  One day, catastrophe strikes – the TV remote control breaks. 

A mysterious TV repairman appears.  No one called him, but he’s there.  He sees the trouble Jennifer and David are in, more than they themselves can see.  He gives them a new remote control, which magically transports them right into the TV show.  Suddenly, David and Jennifer are characters in a black & white 1950’s TV show…

…where life is perfect.  The family all sits at the breakfast table together eating a breakfast made to clog your arteries.  Mom stays home and dotes on Dad and the kids, Dad goes to his 9-5 job that always has him home by dinner, except maybe on bowling night, and the kids, Jennifer and David, who are now called Bud and Mary Sue, trundle off to high school in their penny loafers and poodle skirt where they have to learn to navigate life in this black and white TV town.  It’s not as perfect as it seemed.

For one thing, there are no bathrooms.  Think about it – did you ever see Donna Reed or June Cleaver step into the powder room?  Nope. 

There are other difficulties too.  David and Jennifer basically clash with the people of Pleasantville because they are different.  They have been shaped by the real world – the real, 3-dimensional world.

And interestingly, their mere presence in Pleasantville begins to change the place and the people.  They begin to have subtle influences on people they interact with.  The changes show up when the characters begin to take on color.  In this black and white world, one by one, people begin to show some color, as they take on some depth in terms of their emotions, their values, their perspectives on the world.

Then there is the predictable backlash. Those who have not been colorized lash out angrily against the coloreds, victimizing them. There is definitely a nod here to the real clashes that were occurring in our country around that time having to do with skin color.  But the issue is even broader than that.

It has to do with sexuality, gender roles, openness to cultural differences and new ways of seeing things, doing things.  They are introduced to books, art, music and ideas that are all new to them.  It has to do with becoming more fully human.  And this blossoming into full humanity is threatening for some who can’t understand it.

You might be wondering what this extended recap of the movie Pleasantville has to do with the scriptures.  It’s all about how sometimes a new thing can be very challenging or threatening for some, even while it is ripe with new possibility for others. 

The people in Pleasantville were learning that there was a whole big undiscovered world outside their town limits.  They were discovering that there were other possible ways of being outside of the well-worn routines of their lives. They were discovering that there were other ways of seeing life.  They were discovering the limitations of Pleasantville.

But at the same time, David and Jennifer were learning to appreciate the genuinely good qualities of Pleasantville.  Again, it wasn’t all black and white.  New things were happening for everyone.

And basically, newness was what Jesus was bringing to Israel.  He had been traveling around the Galilee and surrounding regions teaching, healing, and feeding, and doing these things in radically new ways.  As the Pharisees watch him, they are less joyful about the good things he is doing than they are concerned about the ways he is doing them because, to use a well-worn phrase, “We’ve never done it that way before.”

They say to him, “Why don’t you follow the traditions of the Elders?  Why don’t you all wash your hands the way you are supposed to?”  To the Pharisees, their carelessness about this detail is an ominous sign of the errors of their ways, the bad things to come.  They can’t see the amazing new things that are happening because they are fixated on the old.

The Pharisees are seeing all these things Jesus is doing through the parameters they have set for defining what it is to be a Jew.  Jesus doesn’t fit in these parameters – even though he is as authentic in his faith as a man could be.  It’s the challenge of encountering something new.

The church is full of Pharisees, too, when we encounter something new.  We pull out all the old rebuttals, like –

We tried that before and it didn’t work.

That will never happen here.

This isn’t a _____ kind of church.  And if it becomes one, I’ll go somewhere else.

Like the Pharisees Jesus encountered, behind these remarks there is genuine perplexity about why people don’t just follow the old traditional ways.  But sometimes when people try to squeeze themselves into the old traditional ways, they just can’t make it fit – like David and Jennifer trying to squeeze themselves into the world of Pleasantville.  There are times when the Holy Spirit is moving us into a new age, when all things are considered anew.  Some of the old ways will be dusted off and carried into the new age, but some will be left behind because, while they have served us well, their usefulness has passed. 

Just like in Pleasantville, when David and Jennifer discovered what was truly valuable in that little town, but also what should be let go to make room for something new.

It’s a challenging process, discerning the “something old and something new” that we will bring with us into the church for the future.  And it’s a process that each one of us needs to be a part of – for ourselves and for the good of the church as a whole.  The Spirit moves in our midst and calls to each one of us to listen and respond.

Listen to the words from the Song of Solomon:  The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.  The Spirit calls us toward something new.

So I ask you today:  What is one thing God may be inviting you to let go of?  It could be anything.  It may be a notion about how the church exists in relation to the rest of the world.  It could have something to do with how you would describe your congregation.  It might be some aspect of your own spiritual life or the spiritual life of the church. It might also be something that is deeply personal to you and you alone. 

Then I ask you to consider this: What is one way God is inviting you to be a part of something new?  You may not know yet what it is.  Often we live in the in-between space of waiting for the Spirit to speak.  Even so, try to keep listening, and remember – for all things there is a season, and the Lord is always creating something new.

God with Us

How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord of heavenly forces!

My very being longs, even yearns,

    for the Lord’s courtyards.

My heart and my body

    will rejoice out loud to the living God!

Yes, the sparrow too has found a home there;

    the swallow has found herself a nest

    where she can lay her young beside your altars,

    Lord of heavenly forces, my king, my God!

Those who live in your house are truly happy;

    they praise you constantly. Selah

Those who put their strength in you are truly happy;

    pilgrimage is in their hearts.

As they pass through the Baca Valley,

    they make it a spring of water.

    Yes, the early rain covers it with blessings.

They go from strength to strength,

    until they see the supreme God in Zion.

Lord God of heavenly forces,

    hear my prayer;

    listen closely, Jacob’s God! Selah

Look at our shield, God;

    pay close attention to the face of your anointed one!

Better is a single day in your courtyards

    than a thousand days anywhere else!

I would prefer to stand outside the entrance of my God’s house

    than live comfortably in the tents of the wicked!

The Lord is a sun and shield;

    God is favor and glory.

The Lord gives—doesn’t withhold!—good things

    to those who walk with integrity.

Lord of heavenly forces,

    those who trust in you are truly happy!    (Psalm 84)      

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When my father died, we were fortunate enough to know that his wish was to have his body cremated.  I say fortunate because when you have to make decisions for someone, it is a blessing to know what they wanted.  My mother had also been very clear about her wishes, so there was no question that her remains would be cremated and then spread under a weeping willow tree, beside a lake, with a hot fudge sundae and a good book. 

My father wasn’t quite as explicit – beyond the fact that he was to be cremated he gave no other direction.  But we knew that one of the places he had loved in his life was Portland, Oregon and the surrounding area – the cascade mountain range, and particularly Mt Hood, a majestic volcanic mountain, the highest mountain in Oregon.  When he was young he liked to ski in those mountains.  He talked about it often – often, for my dad anyway, which means he mentioned it a few times. 

Portland was his birthplace, but he left there as a young man.  He moved to California for college and started his career there.  Eventually he made his way to the Midwest, where he lived for the rest of his life.  There was little reason to go back west for a visit, because all his family there was gone.  But I think Oregon was always home for him.

So two of my sisters decided that the best thing to do would be to take his ashes to Oregon, carry them up to Mt Hood, and leave them there.  This was a kind of pilgrimage for them.  None of us had ever been to Oregon, but it was legendary in our minds.  We had always heard about it; we were descended from pioneers who crossed the western United States in covered wagons on the Oregon Trail.  All our lives we had said we wanted to go to Portland some day and see it for ourselves.  So now my sisters made the decision – this was the time to do it.  Both the journey and the destination were important.

That is often true, and yet so easy to forget in our purposeful drive to get somewhere.  Today most of our journeys are very fast, thanks to interstate highways we can travel with nothing to slow us down – and nothing much to look at, either.  Thanks to airplanes, which get us there even faster, with even less to look at.  The faster the better; if we could only teleport!  Much of the time, it is not about the journey – it’s about the destination. 

But there are still times we take the slow way, and when we do we experience a different kind of journey. 

When my son, Henry, began his bike journey this summer, we knew it would be interesting, and challenging, and exciting, and maybe scary.  You see the land much differently from a bike than from a car.  You see little critters moving through the grass.  You see every bug crawling and flying in your vicinity.  You feel the cold in your bones in the early mornings in Maine and then again in New Mexico.  And you feel the unbearably humid heat in Missouri, and the dry-as-an-oven heat in Arizona. 

And the community of bikers experienced all this together, along with the collective aches and pains, the flu they passed around, and the grief of losing one of their own in a tragic accident – Patrick, who was killed by a car in Oklahoma.  They have cried and laughed and held one another all summer.  We can be sure that the experiences of this journey have changed them, shaping them into the men and women they will become.  This journey has been a kind of pilgrimage for them.

We talked about the idea of pilgrimage at the roundtable this week.  We like the idea of the journey as a process.  We wondered a bit about whether the destination even matters in a pilgrimage, because the journey, itself, is so important.  Yes, in fact, the destination does, matter in a pilgrimage.  It’s what makes it a pilgrimage instead of just a wander.  A pilgrimage has a goal, an end point, which the process is building toward.  The pilgrims who walk the Camino de Santiago have a destination; the Muslims who do the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, have a destination; the people of Israel who made pilgrimage to the temple in Jerusalem had a destination.  There is always a destination, but in a pilgrimage the journey is as important as the destination.

We like the idea of pilgrimage – but I fear that few of us will ever embark on one.  Pilgrimage is a demanding thing.  It asks us to put the rest of our life on hold and devote ourselves completely to the journey.  It takes time and devotion, because on the journey of pilgrimage we make ourselves available to encounter God.  That is the not-so-secret secret of pilgrimage.

In the traditional pilgrimages, the destination is always a holy place. Psalm 84 is a love song about the pilgrimage to the holy temple in Jerusalem.  “How lovely is your dwelling place, O God!”  But listen, also, to the way the psalm describes the journey itself: “as they pass through the Baca Valley, they make it a spring of water,” and “they go from strength to strength.”  This is a journey of blessing because God is with them all along the way.

By the time Solomon and all the workers he conscripted finally built the temple in Jerusalem, Israel had been long accustomed to worshiping a sort of portable God.  In their wilderness exile, God traveled with them in the tabernacle.  The Ark of the Covenant was carried from place to place, their visible assurance that God was with them, wherever they were.  So at this time and place it was a big deal to give God a permanent home.  From now on, people would make special journeys – pilgrimages – to be with God in this place.

And yet, even as they were doing this, they were wondering:  is it possible to contain God in a place on earth?  God is so great – if heaven can’t contain God, how could this temple contain God?  Surely, God is too great to be confined. Surely, God is anywhere and everywhere.

The people of Israel were realizing that the God who promised to be with them was able to meet that promise, no mater what trials or hardships they faced.  They came to understand that this God, who had promised Abraham would be a father to many nations with more descendants than there are stars in the sky, who had foretold that he would ultimately be a blessing to all the world – this God would not be contained or limited by anything we humans can do.  The promise, Israel realized, is that God’s name will be in God’s temple, and when we invoke the name of God – particularly in this place, God’s dwelling place – God will be there.  What’s more, Israel knew, the name of God, wherever it is invoked, whomever it is invoked by, holds power.

But for us, even more precious is to know this God came to be with us in flesh and blood, through Jesus the Christ – Immanuel, God with us.  By his sojourn on this earth, his atoning work for us, we claim the blessing of Abraham, to be called children of the living God.

The temple Solomon built is long gone.  But the name of God lives on.  The temple is gone.  But through Christ, and the Holy Spirit, we are made living temples of the Lord.  We have God with us – within us, around us, under and over us, behind and before us.  Immanuel … God with us.  Isn’t that amazing? 

The temple is gone, but pilgrimage is still possible for us.  Listen, and we may hear God calling us to embark on a journey – a journey where the destination may be the same as our starting point, but leave us different than we were when we began.  Listen – God is calling us on a journey that has the power to transform us into the people God intends for us to be.  Let us begin.

The Wish

1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14        Then David slept with his ancestors, and was buried in the city of David. The time that David reigned over Israel was forty years; he reigned seven years in Hebron, and thirty-three years in Jerusalem.

So Solomon sat on the throne of his father David; and his kingdom was firmly established. Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of his father David; only, he sacrificed and offered incense at the high places. The king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the principal high place; Solomon used to offer a thousand burnt offerings on that altar.

At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, “Ask what I should give you.” And Solomon said, “You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant my father David, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward you; and you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne today. And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?” It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. God said to him, “Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, I now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you. I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor all your life; no other king shall compare with you. If you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your life.”

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One of the first images that comes to mind when I read this story about Solomon is the image of Aladdin in the cave where he found the lamp, shining the lamp and, to his amazement, out pops the genie!  Then follows the three wishes, and so on – you know the story. 

And we all have given considerable thought at some point in our lives about what we would do if we were in Aladdin’s shoes.  Haven’t we?  Some of us have put some effort into trying to figure out if there is a means, some possible loophole, to get an extra wish or two or ten out of the deal.  Everybody knows that wishing for 1000 more wishes is against the rules of the game.  But maybe there is some ingenious way of making a wish that will somehow keep on giving.

This is the stuff of daydreams, certainly.  Let your imagination wander with the idea, “If anything were possible, what would I like to be, where would I like to live, what would I like to do.”  That’s also the premise of brainstorming.  No possibilities are shut down, judgment suspended, anything is – at least temporarily – possible.

What would you ask for, if anything were possible?  What is your wish?

Solomon is known as the wise king; this is the quality that makes him stand out from all the other kings of Israel and Judah.  And this is the story of how he gained his wisdom.  But, even though he was young, I think he was already pretty wise to ask for such a thing, don’t you?

Solomon, as a new king, was doing the best he could.  He was not without enemies, even from within his own family.  This is truly Game of Thrones type of stuff.  There were those who plotted to take his throne away from him, he had to be wary of every suggestion, every bit of advice, for hidden motivations.  And he was doing an impressive job. Solomon was nobody’s fool.  He was doing the best he could, and that was pretty good.

But he did, though, go to the high places.

The high places were the places where the other gods were worshiped.  Remember that Israel lived surrounded by people of other religions, that the land they inhabited had been inhabited for a long time by people who worshiped other gods – idols, if you prefer.  And the fact that those worship sites, the high places, had never been destroyed, seemed to be a source of continuing trouble.  Even for Israel, it turns out, it’s very hard to eradicate false idols.

So people continued going to the high places.  Why?  Maybe because they were attractive.  They probably had a lovely view from up there.  Maybe they felt closer to God, being so high.  Or maybe it was more of a social thing.  You know, you would run into other people up there and you could share the latest news, gossip, and so on.  Maybe all of these were reasons.  And maybe they also thought, while I’m here these other so-called gods might hear my pleas.  And what could it hurt if one of them wanted to answer my prayer.  You know – hedging your bets.

It was a nagging, annoying problem in Israel, and Solomon participated in it too.  But here’s the interesting thing: while he was up at one of these high places, God – the one true God – spoke to him in a dream and made this beautiful offer:  Ask what I should give you.  Tell me what you need.

So here is Solomon’s opportunity to ask for that brand new Cadillac chariot.  Or whatever shiny thing he coveted.  He could ask for it.

Or he could ask for his enemies to be smitten.  Remember, he did have enemies, and God could remove this impediment.  Would Solomon want to ask for this? 

He could ask for a big pile of gold.  Money solves a lot of problems.  And it brings a lot of pleasure.  Maybe you or I would want to ask for a big pot of gold.

Maybe we would, if this was the genie in the lamp we were talking to.  But it was God who came to Solomon and posed the question, and somehow we draw a distinction between God and the lamp genie.  God has bigger things in mind when God says Ask what I should give you.  Tell me what you need.

 So, truthfully, that means we have to work a little harder.  Easy answers like, “A million dollars” won’t do.  Sure, a million dollars would be nice, but it has no eternal value.  In the realm of God, we need to think bigger.  And so we need to engage our imaginations – and not just in the idle game of “how would you use the three wishes granted by the genie.  We need to think broader, dig deeper, play with the question, and muse:  what is the thing you, personally, need?  What is it that you need?

Don’t say nothing.  There is not one of us that needs nothing. Because every one of us is broken.  Every one of us has a hole somewhere inside that is longing to be filled.  What is it for you? What could fill that hole?

A million dollars?  A Mercedes Benz?  Neither of those makes good food for body or soul. 

Revenge?  Hate has no nutritional value.  It only leaves you hungrier.

What is it that you need?