The Heart of the Matter

 

Deuteronomy 30:15-20    

Matthew 5:21-37    

There is a story by Graham Greene called The Heart of the Matter. It takes place during the Second World War in an unnamed British colony in Africa. Greene does a very effective job of showing what a difficult cultural experience it was for everyone involved. Those who felt the oppression of British rule, of course, but also the peculiar discomforts of the British working in this foreign land. There was much talk about the weather – far too hot and humid and sunny for the English, except during the rainy season, six months when they all fear they may drown. There was the malaria, which seemed to be an inevitability for anyone who was there long enough, and apparently no treatment for it except quinine. So, lots of gin and tonics. And there was the overwhelming level of distrust – which went in every direction, and this is where we see the real problem.

The distrust, the constant tendency to be suspicious of others’ motives, the lack of understanding, and the resentment that every group seemed to have for the others, all contributed to a sort of sinister atmosphere.

One of these British officers is named Scobie. He has been there 15 years, an unusually long time and, consequently, the other Englishmen regard him as suspect. Because they wonder how anyone could have survived in this place for so long. They know how hard it is. They know that many men have come and gone, corrupted by their experiences to a greater or lesser degree. And so they are very interested in, and suspicious of, Scobie. They spread rumors about him and all the corrupt things they imagine he has done. Yet Scobie is so disciplined he never allows himself to react to the rumors in the smallest way.

It seems that Scobie has managed to survive because of his discipline. He knows where the fault lines are, and he is always conscious of steering clear of them. He goes to the officer’s club in the early evening but refuses a drink because he will be on duty that night. He diligently reports every infraction of the rules, dotting every I and crossing every T. In fact, Scobie is even careful when he writes to his wife, lest he put down anything on paper that would be, even in the smallest sense, a lie. He would simply be unable to sign his name to a written document that contained any untruth.

If he errs it is on the side of omission. Every interaction of his life is handled as though he were under oath on the witness stand.

But one day he does something unusual. In a certain way it is wholly consistent with his character. Yet, in another way and at the same time, it is completely out of character for Scobie. He has a moment of sympathy for a man who broke a rule for what seemed to be a good reason. Rather than submit an honest report about a rules infraction, Scobie hides it.

He doesn’t do it for a bribe – even though he was offered one, he refused it. He only does it because it feels like the humane thing to do. But, after he does this, a strange thing unfolds.

It is as though this one action has punctured a hole in Scobie’s moral cloak. And he is no longer able to guard himself from the evil in the atmosphere, the opportunities for sin that always hover around him. One small act leads to another slightly larger act, then another even larger act. And Scobie is drowning.

It is as though he has lost his moral compass, because Scobie’s compass was only upheld by a perfect submission to the rules. Unfortunately for Scobie, it is not in the nature of humans to be perfect.

Presbyterians have no illusions about that. We are aware that our nature is fallible, that there is a weakness built into us that makes us liable to do the wrong we would try to avoid, and to fail to do the things we know we ought to do. It is not for nothing that we confess our sinfulness when we gather together each Sunday. We stand in need of God’s forgiveness. Every day.

Given that, the words we hear Jesus say in this part of his sermon to his disciples and the crowds listening to him seem incredible.

You thought it was hard when he called you salt. Now he calls you to tear out your eye. You were surprised when he said he had not come to abolish the law and its hold over us but rather to fulfill the law. Now he seems to be showing just how hard it might be.

If you are angry, you will be liable to judgment. If you insult someone you will be liable to the fires of hell. Jesus takes the laws they already know and raises the stakes to the nth degree.

And that seems to be what Scobie is doing also. He has created a ten-foot fence around the faults he might be liable to commit. He strives to live a perfectly upright life in every way.

He fails.

It takes a rather long time, but he eventually fails. And when he does, he has not a compass, an anchor, nor a lifeboat. He is utterly adrift at sea, and will, without doubt, drown.

It doesn’t work. It simply never works when you aim for faultlessness.

Scobie holds his failure close. It is indelibly marked in his memory as the day he lost his integrity. Once he had crossed over the line, that ten-foot fence he had created, he just didn’t know anymore where the boundary lines were.

The story of Scobie is a tragedy, because he is a good man. The reader sympathizes with him as we watch him falter and falter again. We watch him grow more confused about everything around him. He goes to his monthly confession and he says to the priest, “All through this month I have done the minimum.” In a moment of insight he says, “I don’t know how to put it, Father, but I feel – tired of my religion. It seems to mean nothing to me.” Yet the priest finds no real fault in him and seems to have nothing much to offer. He assigns him his Hail Marys and Our Fathers and dismisses him.

Scobie is a man who has always tried to avoid doing wrong. His downfall, perhaps, is that he has not thought enough about doing right. He has not paid attention to the heart of the matter.

And the heart of the matter is that we are created in the image of a loving God. For Christians, Jesus is our model for what it means to be made in God’s image. The heart of the matter is that in Christ we receive forgiveness for our trespasses, yes, but also the Spirit that allows us to grow in grace.

This is what Jesus wants us to see: To avoid the wrong is the bare minimum.  To seek the good is to live into our identity as the image of God.

This is the heart of the matter:

To accept God’s forgiveness for our wrongs yet to strive anew for the good.

To know ourselves as humble and frail creatures yet to seek to be like Christ.

To turn, once again, from sin and to center ourselves in God’s love.

In the words of Moses: God sets before us blessings and curses, life and death. “Choose life,” he says. Choose life.

It is a choice that we all have. When we keep our focus on the edges, the boundary lines, we are keeping our focus on sin, failure, death. But when we look to Jesus, his words and actions, we see all the possibility there is for us. We see the possibility of life in all its fullness.

When all is said and done, that is the heart of the matter.

Photo by Nedelcu Catalin: https://www.pexels.com/photo/hand-drawing-a-heart-on-the-steamy-car-window-15316723/

Salt and Light

 

Matthew 5:13-20        

When I was a graduate student in Texas, I attended a Lutheran campus ministry. We had services every Sunday morning, just like most churches. We followed the lectionary, we heard a sermon, and we celebrated the sacraments. Our pastor, whom we called PJ, had a certain way he liked to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. He would invite us all up to the front, to stand in a circle around the altar. And the first thing he would do was take a little dish of salt. He would go around the circle to each one of us, take a pinch of salt and put it on our tongues, saying, “remember your baptism.”

Remember your baptism. I was always a little bit mystified by this ritual. I wasn’t entirely certain I understood what salt had to do with my baptism. But I liked it. A little bit of salt tastes good. The taste, the gesture, the familiar words all felt right. And the strength of the experience stayed with me.

I did understand at the time that he was intentionally linking our baptism to the experience of communion. Because that is what the church does. In baptism, we are made a member of the family of Christ and we are given the gift of the Holy Spirit. In communion, each time we receive it, the bread and the cup, we are nourished again with the gifts of the Spirit, the good things of life that enable us to grow in goodness and faith.

This I understood. But I was not quite as clear about the salt. I wonder if the crowds and the disciples who listened to Jesus call them salt, maybe they were not quite clear either. Maybe they murmured to one another, “Salt? Says we’re salty, did he? Hmm.” And they wondered what he meant. Jesus probably had them thinking about that for a long time. Maybe every time they added a little salt to their food, they thought of Jesus’ words.

PJ would bring a big box of donuts to church every Sunday. After he gave the benediction he would race out of the sanctuary, grab his donuts and then run out the front door with them on the area he called the tarmac. He knew that as soon as the service ended we would all pick up our backpacks, head out the door and “take off” for other places – the library, the student union, the coffee shop. He would stand out there grinning with his donuts, blocking the runway so we had to slow down. Take a minute to talk to somebody. Be friendly. Care about one another. PJ sweetened the deal with his donuts.

This was all good training, I think. Those of us who sat in church each week, we had mostly been raised up to sit quietly, listen, follow instruction. So when PJ held out a pinch of salt in front of our faces, we all opened our mouths for him like baby birds. When he blocked our paths on the tarmac we all slowed down and accepted one of his donuts. We were good students and he was teaching us how to be good disciples of Jesus.

One Sunday he asked us all to all bring in a wash rag. He said, “Bring me one that you have used – don’t go out and buy a new one. I want a rag that you have used to wash yourself with.” And so we all did. Mine was blue. Then PJ took all these rags and he sewed them together in a patchwork stole. He wore this stole every Sunday. I could see a piece of my blue wash rag sewn together with all the rest. Another powerful image.

Good teachers use powerful images, images that stick with us, that we continue to think about for a long time – maybe all our lives long – because we somehow sense that there is still more to unravel, more that it can teach us.

Jesus used powerful images in his all teaching. With his parables he left his listeners with such images etched into their minds, of seeds and vines and harvests; masters and servants, debts and debtors, fathers and sons. When he said, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of people.” When he said, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest for your souls.”

And we spend a lifetime turning these images over in our minds, pulling out threads here and there. Threads that may fill us with comfort, assure us of safety. Threads that may spark energy and desire to do something new. Threads that keep us seeking something more, because we always feel that we are on the edge of comprehending it.

I think I will probably never feel that I have a solid comprehension of the salt image. I hope that doesn’t cause you to feel disappointed in your pastor. But I think I will be turning this one over in my mind for as long as my mind is able. For me it’s an image that never quite gives itself to me fully, but it always gives me something.

Sort of like that tiny pinch of salt that PJ would give me every Sunday before I received the bread and the cup. Just a little bit that leaves you wanting more.

When Kira was born, we asked PJ to baptize her. He was beside himself with joy. As you might imagine, being a campus pastor didn’t give him many opportunities to baptize babies. Actually, this may have been his first. On the day of her baptism, he filled a washtub with warm water, we lowered her body in. He poured the warm water over her head, and when he lifted her out of the tub, her patted her dry with his patchwork stole.

After that, every time we celebrated communion, I would carry Kira into the circle with me. And PJ would smile and offer her a little pinch of salt and say, with a tear in his eye, “Remember your baptism, Kira.”

One Sunday when she was about two years old, PJ gave her the little pinch of salt, like he always did, and began to turn to the next person when we heard Kira say, “More.” She wanted more.

So it is with the goodness of God. A little taste goes a long way, but it will always leave us wanting more. More of God’s goodness. More of God’s guidance. More of the flavor of God.

Perhaps that is sort of what it means to be the salt and be the light. Each one of us can shed a little light in this world for others. Each one of us can bring a little flavor to the world. And when we do bring the wonderful flavor of God, the light of God, to our interactions with others, we may leave them wanting a little bit more.

May you be the salt that brings a taste of the kingdom to this world.

 

The newly baptized squirming and squealing with delight.

Top Photo: Kira with parents and godparents at University Lutheran Center at UT-Austin.

The Blessing Way

Micah 6:1-8        

Matthew 5:1-12

There is a movie called Hashtag Blessed. It’s about a young woman who is miserable in her life for a variety of reasons, but one key cause is that she is trying to live her life through the lens of Instagram. And that is a lens that is almost guaranteed to make you feel like your life doesn’t measure up.

She scrolls through and sees a picture from a friend who just got a new car! #blessedlife! Other friends looking fine in their fancy clothes, hanging out in elegant places, surrounded by dazzling, glittery things - #blessedlife!

Real life just doesn’t measure up to that for most of us.

Sometimes we are a little confused about what it means when we talk about blessing, being blessed. In the popular vernacular, to be blessed is about the same as being lucky. Or maybe being good – good enough to have all the things you want to have. But if that is what we believe, then Jesus is throwing a king-size curveball into our belief system.

The story we hear today from chapter 5 really begins in verse 23 of chapter 4, when Jesus began traveling through Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, proclaiming the good news, and healing every sickness, every ailment among the people. The word spread, and soon they all began bringing the sick and the lame to him, demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics; great crowds began following him.

And when he saw the crowds – this is where we begin today – when he saw the crowds he began to teach these things. The blessings.

When he pronounces a blessing on the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, those who hunger for righteousness, the persecuted, among other things, we struggle to make any sense out of this. Because we know from experience that being poor in spirit, feeling meek or mournful, being persecuted – these things feel like the opposite of being blessed.

A blessing is a good thing, by definition. Being poor, hungry, meek, mournful, and persecuted – these are not good things. So how are we to understand the meaning of these words, the beatitudes?

Of course, Jesus came out of a rich tradition of blessing. In Jewish tradition, a blessing can be understood as increasing. When we bless someone we are asking God to increase good things in their lives. And in the scriptures, we can see that the good things being increased come in all forms: increased crops, increased land, increased offspring, increased happiness.

More is better, the Bible seems to say. More is good, we agree.

But be careful about how we handle this notion of increase. Because more, when it comes to us at someone else’s expense, this is not blessing.

Blessing, when rightly understood, always involves an acknowledgment that there is something greater than ourselves and our personal interests at work in every part of life. Jewish teaching says that a person is obligated to recite 100 blessings a day – every day. But it’s not hard, because there are many, many blessings.

There are of course blessings for the food we eat. A blessing for the grain that grows to make bread, the fruit of the vine that gives us wine, the trees that bear fruit in their season. Blessed are you, O Lord, who creates different kinds of sustenance.

And there is a blessing for the hunger in us that allows us to eat and enjoy the blessing of being fed. Blessed are you, Lord, who creates numerous souls and their deficiencies; for all that you have created with which to maintain the life of every being.

There is a blessing for seeing a lightning strike, for hearing the roll of thunder, for experiencing an earthquake. Blessed are you, Lord, king of the universe, whose strength and might fills the world.

There are blessings for experiencing the pleasures of the world: the smell of flowers, of herbs, of balsam oil. There are blessings for new experiences – from wearing a new outfit to eating the produce of your garden to starting school to gathering together for a holiday. Blessed are you, O Lord, who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this occasion.

There are blessings for God’s law, the greatest gift of all.

There are blessings for seeing a very wise person, for seeing a king, for seeing a place where a miracle happened.

There is a blessing for going to the bathroom. Blessed are you, O Lord, who created us with many openings and many cavities… I will leave the rest to your imaginations, But I will say that I think we all know that it truly is a blessing when all the parts of your body seem to be working the way they are supposed to, is it not?

What we see if we participate in the ritual of blessing is that all kinds of experiences and circumstances in life, whether they seem good or bad to us, can be connected with a blessing. Because to attach a blessing to them is a way of acknowledging God’s hand in everything, God’s concern for everyone and everything. And that God’s hand runs over all the things of life, smoothing and leveling – filling up the low places, and bringing down the high places.

It is, in a way, about balance.

The phrase I have used as the title of this sermon comes from the Navajo tradition, in which blessing is an essential part of life, of their way. In reading about the Navajo Blessing Way I have come to better understand the way that blessing – in their tradition, in Jewish tradition, and in our own tradition – calls upon God to bring balance. Or, we might say, Shalom.

Something we need very much.

Because to bless is also to know that there is evil in our midst. To know that there is sadness, there is anger, there is greed, there is violence. There is pain and death. To know that we might at any time suffer – from our own sadness or sickness, or from someone else’s pain or anger. It is far too easy to get swallowed up in the harmful feelings and thoughts. To let them make us recoil from another one’s suffering, or set ourselves against another one’s anger. The act of blessing serves to bring much needed balance into our lives.

When we recognize that we are frail and broken beings, created by God, wholly in need of the gifts God provides, this is a way to bring balance. When we can look at the ones who are persecuted, the ones who are meek, the ones who are mourning. When we can look at the family of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, and feel their pain is our pain; that the injustice they experience is an injustice that hurts us all. Then we are taking a step toward restoring balance in the world.

Then we too know ourselves as blessed, right along with them.

All this is to say that when Jesus offers his surprising blessings he is telling us something about balance. We can be blessed if we have some need that only God can fulfill.

And he is telling us something about the way God is present in all things: in the needs we have, in the needs of the people around us, in the troubles we might face in our lives. In making these surprising blessings, Jesus is speaking two co-existing truths: these present circumstances of life and the eternal truth of God’s kingdom, which we know is ours.

And when we know both these truths and can hold them both at the same time, then we know – we can see – God is always in our midst.

And when we can see ourselves in that great crowd of people before Jesus, standing in need of the things only God can give, then we can begin to be a part of the work of shalom, of bringing God’s healing to the world.

Photo by Ksenia Chernaya: https://www.pexels.com/photo/boy-lighting-menorah-3730941/  

Saying Yes

Matthew 4:12-23        

Something that has become a popular thing for the church to do around epiphany is a thing called Star Words. This activity is based on the premise of the magi followed the star to find Jesus. And so each person is given a star with a single word printed on it. Somehow, we follow where that word leads us. Spiritually. For a whole year. You can use it in your daily prayer, journaling, art, or however you like.

I have never done it before, but this year I went to a presbytery Epiphany luncheon where I was offered a star. I selected a bright pink one. The color made me smile. But when I turned it over and looked at the word I stopped smiling. The word was “Try.”

Try? Who would think that this word would be a good word to meditate on? Try? Just looking at the word made me feel defeated.

Maybe I should explain why. Try is a word I believe we use to mentally beat ourselves up. Try harder – no, harder! If you can’t do something, it’s because you haven’t tried hard enough. In fact, it seems as though you can always try harder. So, have you ever actually tried hard enough?

So I have some problems with the word.

When I hear the word “try” I think of what Yoda said – you know that wise Jedi-master-puppet from Star Wars: Do. Or do not. There is no try.

Do, or do not. There is no try. A wise puppet he is.

I think I can see Yoda’s point. Try is not a result. Try is not an excuse. Try is not a reproach. There is no try. There is only do or do not.

And this is what we see in these disciples of Jesus.

When he called them, it was not a convenient time. These men were in the middle of their workday. Simon Peter and Andrew were just casting their nets into the sea, hoping to make a good catch to take ashore. James and John were in the act of repairing their nets, a constant part of the work of a fisherman, mending and tending the tools of their trade. They were all hard at work. Their lives, the lives of their families, depended on it.

And Jesus calls out to them: “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” And they all drop their nets and follow him.

Do. or do not. There is no try.

It frightens us to see this kind of response, though. We wonder if this is what Jesus expects from us, too. Are we supposed to drop everything that feels important to us in order to follow him? Are we supposed to walk away from things that feel essential to us in order to follow him?

We might feel more kinship with these guys if they responded differently, more like how we might have responded. For example: Jesus calls out to them, they pause a moment in their work. A person would know they were seriously thinking about what he was asking them, offering them, in fact. And then they say: That is an interesting proposition, Jesus. Something I would definitely like to think about. But, as you can see, I’m in the middle of something right now. I have lots of obligations, of course. So here is what I’ll do. Let me think this over…talk it over with my family…pray on it. And I will try to get back to you very soon.

But you know if that’s what they said, Jesus would have walked away. Just moved on.

Because there were other times, other would-be disciples who responded kind of like that. They said, “Hey, Jesus, sounds great. Just let me first go home and take care of family business,” but Jesus said it’s not like that. Follow me or don’t follow me.

Do or do not. There is no try.

The great Yoda had it right. No matter what excuses these fishermen made, no matter what deal they tried to negotiate with Jesus, it is still a simple matter of doing or not doing.

Of saying yes, or saying no. It really was in their hands.

So it is when I say I try to practice some spiritual discipline at least five days a week, but sometimes I don’t do that. Because the reality is that on some days I choose not to. The decision really is in my hands.

It might seem a bit harsh thing, it might sound like a scold, but it is not my intention to berate or pressure anyone. I’m not saying, “Try harder.” Rather, what I say is this: Many things are in our hands when they are placed there.

When they are placed there, and we are invited to take them.

In the Reformed church we like to say there are three parts to every call: there is the work of the Holy Spirit within a person, stirring in them an inner sense of call; there is the work of the Spirit within a person’s community that guides and supports them through the process of discerning the call; and finally, there is the particular call to serve in a specific time and place.

And when all three are working together for you it is like something is placed in your hand, and you close your fingers around it gently, and you say yes.

At that moment, Jesus is standing before you saying, “Follow me.” You drop your nets, climb out of your boat, and you follow him.

A couple of weeks ago we installed four elders to active service. Each of them was invited by a member of the nominating committee to serve in this way. The four who stood up here are the ones who said yes.

Today we will install four deacons to active service, and the same is true of them. They are the ones who said yes.

There might have been other times when they said no, but this time they said yes.

The truth is, we might say no to something many times before we finally say yes.  And that might simply be because we faithfully discerned that it was not the right thing at the right time for us. But remember this: as those who have been baptized, it is our most basic calling to be available, to do the work of faithful discernment, to trust in the Holy Spirit to lead us well. And then to say yes or say no.

Listen…trust…know that Jesus calls us toward a better life, should we be ready to say yes.

Photo by Drahomír Posteby-Mach on Unsplash  

What Men Are These?

Matthew 2:1-12

Because I wanted to get off to a riveting start this year, I thought we might begin with a little examination of the genealogy of Jesus. Shall we?

Yes, I know. Some of you are thinking reading through the genealogy is about as riveting as reading through the card catalog. And others of you are now thinking what’s a card catalog? But, come on. It will be fun.

“Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers” – and it goes on for a bit like that.

Typically, genealogies in scripture contain the names of the men in the line of descent – the patriarchs. And there are plenty of them in this list. So many that most readers probably don’t even notice that Matthew has thrown a few women in. Four, to be exact. What women are these? Let me tell you.

Tamar, the woman who posed as a harlot by the side of the road to ensnare Judah, her father-in-law.

Rahab, the prostitute in Jericho who let the spies of Israel hide in her boudoir.

Ruth, the Moabite woman who hustled her way into the family of a prominent Bethlehem man, Boaz.

And the wife of Uriah, also known as Bathsheba, who bore a son for King David while she was married to another man.

Some families want to shove the black sheep of the family tree into the back of the closet, but Matthew puts them right in the middle of the genealogy of Jesus the Christ. You have to wonder: Why are they here? It’s a bit strange.

No sooner do we get past this strangeness in Chapter 1 than we arrive at the scene in Chapter 2 where “wise men” from the east come to pay homage to the newborn king.

It is another mystery, really, that Matthew calls these men wise. Maybe they are knowledgeable about the stars, but they are dangerously naïve about people. They waltz into the court of King Herod, one of the most paranoid and ruthlessly violent kings ever, to ask for directions. “Excuse me, do you know where we might find the newborn king of the Jews? Oh, you’re the king of the Jews? Well, we meant the new king.” What could possibly go wrong here?

At any rate, they manage to get directions, although why they needed them, I don’t know. That star seemed to be as reliable as Google maps. They found Jesus.  But I don’t doubt that by the time they did, everyone between Jerusalem and Bethlehem was talking about them. What men are these? They didn’t exactly fit in.

These men from Baghdad, or thereabout, were Magi – magicians. They looked different, they dressed different, they sounded different and acted different. Really, everything about them was different – and by different I mean unacceptable. Yet, here they are with front row seats at the birth of the Jewish Messiah.

They were thoughtful enough to bring gifts – strange gifts, it must be said. I imagine Mary receiving their packages of Frankincense and Myrrh and wondering: Why? Although she didn’t wonder about the gold. That would be useful. Even so, she must have asked herself: What men are these, and why are they here?

Do we wonder? Why are they here? We should.

We might discover that Matthew, in his unique way, is telling us something about who we are.

One thing that concerns me about Christians is this: we have a tendency to talk about who we are in terms of what we are not. We define ourselves in opposition to everyone else in the world. We are not Muslim or Jewish or Hindu or Pagan or Buddhist or Atheist or anything else you can name. We are different from everyone else, we want to say.

And it’s possible that some of the folks in Jesus’ family tree felt that way too. They were acutely aware of who they were not, and who was not one of them. So they gave the side eye to Rahab, that woman who let the Hebrew spies into her room. They turned to their sisters and tsked Ruth when she just showed up in Boaz’s fields all by herself. They gave Bathsheba the back of their hand when she tried to start up a conversation with them at the market.

And when those Magi showed up in their strange headwear and colorful robes, people whispered about those crazy foreigners. Don’t even know where they’re going.

Yet here they are – these crazy foreigners. The welcoming committee as we open the New Testament. Let us show you the way, they say to us.

Then they might show us some of their favorite parts: When Jesus told his disciples that they would have to go to the back of the line if they wanted to be his. When he invited the misfits to sit down at the popular kids table and passed them the bread and wine. He lets them all in. They say, Look – he’s going to turn the world upside down, just like he flipped the money-changers’ tables at the temple.

We call this the Epiphany, which means revelation. The moment when the light bulb goes on and we can see something we couldn’t see before. When these strange characters from out of town came to bow down before the baby Jesus, to show the world who he was and what he would do. He would shake things up and turn things upside down. He would open the gates, tear down the walls and let everybody in. Come to the table. I am the bread of life. I am the cup of salvation.

He would rock our world. He still does.

Picture: ChurchArt.Com

Sacred Doing

 

Isaiah 63:7-9      

Matthew 2:13-23        

I have been reminded this week about a remark someone made to me once. Nothing you probably haven’t heard too. Just that all the things that happen in our lives – the happy things, the sad things, the crazy things, the boring things – they all stay with us and remain a part of who we are and always will be. Our life experiences – all of them, not just the ones we choose, make us the men and women we are. The good, the bad, and the indifferent. We can’t do anything about that. All we can do is choose how we will remember it, and that is a choice.

How we choose to remember the things that have made up our lives, it matters.

The ways in which we remember things are important for how they shape us, how they give our life meaning. The act of remembering is about telling the story of who we are.

That is what the Bible does. It tells the story of who we are. All of it.

And there are parts of it we like better than others. In the Christmas season we can’t resist the warm and cozy promise of it. The newborn baby, “no crying he makes.” At least, according to the song. We make the stable and the rough manger seem like desirable locations. In our imaginations we see the scene through soft filters and warm colors. We crop out any of the less attractive, more awkward parts that we would find in a stable with live animals.

We are so content in this scene that we usually fail to remember what happens next.

But Matthew does not let us forget it – not at all.

A voice was heard in Ramah, Rachel weeping for her children. She refused to be consoled because they are no more.

We know her story from the book of Genesis. Rachel was the one desired by Jacob, the one for whom he happily gave seven years of labor to her father Laban for her bride price. But Rachel was then left behind because her older sister, Leah, had to be married first. Laban tricked Jacob into marrying Leah. Then, if he still wanted Rachel, he could work another seven years for her. Which Jacob did.

Rachel’s life was hard, and her suffering was great. She was plagued by years of infertility. She longed with every fiber of her being for a child. She watched with envy as her sister Leah was blessed with many healthy children while she remained barren. After many years she bore a son, Joseph, then another, Benjamin. But the birth of Benjamin was hard. Rachel died in childbirth. She was buried far from her home. Her two sons grew up without a mother.

The story of Rachel we hear in Genesis never mentions her tears, but we know she had reasons to weep.

Genesis doesn’t say anything about Rachel weeping, but we hear it later from the prophet Jeremiah. The Israelite exiles, on their bitter march to Babylon, pass by Rachel’s grave and hear her weeping, weeping for her children who are no more, weeping for all that Israel’s children have lost.

And then, again, we are reminded of Rachel’s tears in this second chapter of Matthew. Rachel still weeping, for all the little children who were destroyed by Herod’s wrath.

It is not a part of the Christmas story we often choose to remember, even though it’s right there in Matthew 2, right after Mary and Joseph open the gifts from the wise men. Right after Joseph has another dream in which he is warned to flee, and so they do, and find safe haven from Herod. In Egypt. We imagine them living there securely. But we ought to remember that they were refugees, and there is little about that you would call secure.

We lightly skip over this part of the Christmas story in the same way we tend to skip over our own losses when we tell our stories. We don’t talk about the things in our lives that made us afraid because who wants to hear about that? Nobody. Not even we want to remember the things that made us afraid.

But Matthew doesn’t skip over it, and there is good reason for that. It’s because everything that happens to us, the happy and the sad, even the terrifying, all stay with us and become a part of who we are and always will be. and on the whole, that is not a bad thing.

It is not bad, because to remember our own sorrows may give us compassion for those who are suffering their own sorrows now. To remember our own fear may give us empathy for those who are living in fear now. To remember our own suffering may make us merciful toward those who suffer now.

Remembering the bad can be good. But, again, it sort of depends on how you choose to remember it.

Jewish tradition says that a person should recite 100 blessings each day; and there are blessings for everything under the sun – the good, the awkward and embarrassing, and everything else.  “I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord, the praiseworthy acts of the Lord, because of all that the Lord has done for us,” we hear from Isaiah. 

So we can have these words of praise right next to Herod’s slaughter of the innocents. We can have the wise men kneeling in worship before the Christ child right next to Rachel’s loud lamentation. Rachel will not be consoled for the losses, yet there is hope. In this world there is sorrow and there is joy, both. There is pain and there is hope, both. There is no amount of Christmas joy that wipes out the sadness of the world, but there is no amount of sadness that erases the joy we know in Christ.

We need them both. When we remember the sorrows of our lives they can move us to action – actions to bring more justice and mercy to the world. And this is why seeing the sacred reflected in all things, being the sacred in ourselves, is followed by doing the sacred, where we respond to all that we have seen and all that we have been given.

Rachel still weeps for her children. The children of Uvalde, still grieving. The children of Haiti suffering a new outbreak of cholera. The children of Ukraine, in the midst of war. Suffering continues. But this is exactly why Christ was born. He became fully human to identify with us in every way, from beginning to end, reminding us at every step, that we are not alone. God is with us.

Blessed be the Lord our God for this gift.   

picture: ChurchArt.Com