Good morning everyone. It is wonderful to be here and worship together.
How shall I begin? Maybe with Howard Zinn’s premise. Howard Zinn, as many of you know, was a peace activist deeply opposed to the Vietnam War, and the author of such books as, The People's History of the United States, which focussed on the perspectives of Native Americans, African Americans, Trade Unionists and Feminists.
Howard Zinn writes this in another book entitled, You Can't Stay Neutral on a Moving Train:
" I start from the supposition that...all we have to do is think about the state of the world today .. to realize that things are all upside down." Zinn’s observation of the world’s “upside downness” might be applied to any age, don’t you think? The marginalized, poor and powerless people could always have told of what is drastically amiss in the world, if any were inclined to listen. As did Jesus, himself. In the occupied Holy Land of Jesus’s day, his life, death, and resurrection all attest to the truth that “the world did not know him." (John 1:10). Yes, a great deal was and is amiss in the world that God, nevertheless, has so loved.
I think the title of Zinn’s book, You Can't Stay Neutral on a Moving Train, conveys our situation rather well: we come into a world which is already moving in certain directions, and if we remain unconscious, or remain passive even if aware, then we too simply are carried along, to paraphrase Zinn. We, unwittingly or not, then collaborate with the forces driving this train. But isn’t turning the course of a moving train, a burden too great to bear, a task too overwhelming for most of us “ordinary people”?
Now let me share my premise in this sermon--or, more accurately, the foundation of my faith. The forces driving the train do not have the last word, whatever we ordinary people achieve or do not achieve. For our lives do not belong only to us; we have not produced our being or the being of life. Our efforts, though necessary--do not sustain us. We depend upon the whole for survival, yes, even upon all the universes which God has brought into being and which God sustains. And if we achieve any good thing, however great or small, we do it not in our own strength. We are all connected to the source of life, as the branch is to the vine; and cut off--we die. As Jesus said, “Apart from me, you can do nothing.”
Yet, are we not largely unaware of the enduring loving kindness, forgiveness, and ongoing help we receive in our lives? For were we aware, we would be filled with gratitude every waking minute. So, when we find ourselves thinking, "It is all up to us", we are mistaken, I am convinced. This is a mindset the dominant culture encourages, and that keeps the train moving in its wrong direction, making our tasks of changing course not only hugely burdensome, but impossible.
Rather than continue in that mindset which insists that "Everything is up to us", let us begin, and begin over and over as necessary, to ponder and live into the meaning of Jesus’s words, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." (Matt 11:29-30)
What, indeed, could Jesus possibly have meant in saying his yoke is easy and his burden light? Surely not that the struggle on behalf of justice is an easy one: after all, in going up against the authorities of his day he put himself in harm’s way AND WAS CRUCIFIED... is this an easy yoke?
In what sense, then, would our taking Jesus' yoke upon ourselves, bring us his light burden and rest? And what is entailed in taking the yoke of the one who is gentle and humble of heart...to walk alongside him? What kind of yielding and surrender is needed to be able to receive with him the work, the play, the living, and the dying, that God would have us receive, neither more nor less, not overreaching, and not turning aside from responsibility either, but doing what the presence of God makes possible for us. Real joy, and real rest: not the world’s or our own judgement of our success, how much praise or blame is meted out to us, but how faithful we are in God's eyes--which only God knows fully.
This may be getting a bit abstract. In simple words, what really is this yoke of Jesus all about? Something to do with Love, perhaps… But what actually? “What’s love got to do with it?", calling to mind the Tina Turner song and the subject of Tom Copps' recent teaching to us. In Howard Zinn's description of an upside down, topsy turvy world, love often can seem a pretty ineffective player, if recognized as a player at all.
Here though, is what I believe is the most essential question of our lives: What is the meaning of this Love, when Jesus says "God is Love"?
So, given this season, I’d like to reflect a little about how love is expressed--or missed--by sharing a little of my Christmas experience, and a memory from my childhood.
Traditionally I have found myself wrapping presents and even decorating the tree until 1:00 AM or so Christmas morning.. But this year was different. On Christmas Eve there was caroling and delicious supper at Gail’s and Dottie's-- thank you for the warmth of that gathering! I had no cares about getting the tree and presents ready by early Christmas morning…
In fact, this year I almost didn’t get a tree since Denise wouldn’t be coming home for the holidays. Ever since she was born I have insisted upon a live tree--the more towering the better-- one year it took up seemingly half of our apartment's living room, truly enormous, and not to be matched again. But then the conviction came that I should get one anyway! Since I was a young child the sight of the fir or pine all lit with colored lights, especially at night with all other lights turned off, has ushered in the sense of something mysterious, beautiful, and wonderful that I have associated with Christmas ever since. And this year has proved no exception.
Let me delve a little deeper now into a memory of Christmas as a child. I'm guessing I was no more than 9 years old or thereabouts... I recall that particular Christmas morning being showered with wonderful presents--it seemed more even than usual, and among them, the best one, was the most beautiful doll adorned in a glimmering gold ballerina's dress and wearing a silver crown in her auburn hair. Later that morning I remember going to visit my best friend Margaret who lived across the street. Only something happened: my happy mood became increasingly overshadowed as Margaret unveiled present after present, and even a doll--though I wouldn't admit it--possibly more beautiful than the one I had received.
Sorry to say, I lacked the sense--nevermind the gratitude, not to complain in some fashion to my mother, probably saying something along the lines of, "Margaret got better presents than I did." The reaction I got didn't elevate anyone’s mood, of that I’m sure.
I’m not interested in excusing the behavior or envy of my 9 yr old self... but I’m pretty certain my feeling of discontent, as the getting of presents took center stage in the holiday, is not that unusual. Middle class children today, are soaked even more thoroughly in an acquisitive culture than I had any idea of, back in the day when the most exciting thing someone got was a walky talky--devices you could speak into and hear the other person from as far away as down the street! No cell phone made an appearance at our Christmases then, no computer, no ipod, no internet world was even remotely imagined. It is a very different world today, even staggeringly so.
But the feeling of love and the lack of love is fundamentally as it always has been, and it underlies as it always has a child's real, solid happiness, contentment, and assurance of safety. Or, in its absence: grief, anxiety, inability to trust. I wonder if any of you remember making the promise I did as a young child? My sense is I was 6 or 7 yrs of age when a negative interaction with a parent occurred. The details I’ve long forgotten, but I do remember my solemn promise to myself, which was this: "I will never, never, forget what it feels like to be a child when I become a grown-up...never."
I expect what prompted my promise, was the sense of an unbridgeable gap with a parent--that the parent's love cannot bear the full weight of the child, that the center of the child's very life which that parent's love is--is somehow not secure, and that "the center does not hold", to borrow a phrase from a Yeats' poem. Equipped with the experience of loving relationships and at times, their unravelling, children are launched from their families into their future relationships with others and with themselves, and doubtless some of these early notions about what love means are the basis for later troubles in seeking and giving love.
I think Steve Mohr was onto something when he commented via email in one of our longest extended discussions (happened to be about the listserv guidelines). I had emailed the suggestion that I felt our communications online should be guided by the two commandments: “Love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind; and love your neighbor as you love yourself.”
Steve wrote "You may not know how I love myself. That maybe one of our troubles." To probe this insight, to consider the ways we go about trying to love ourselves would require another whole sermon, and time does not permit me to do so now...maybe you’d like to rise to the challenge, Steve?
I would submit, though that we fail to love ourselves by craving and striving for the "best" or “most” of anything, including any of the cultural values expressed through celebrity/popularity, money/wealth, and power/authority-- and to which so many lives are devoted.
What do we know about how this Love acts? From the New Testament, with which I’m better acquainted than the Hebrew Bible, we see love's manifestation often through acts of forgiveness.
As Jesus taught his disciples, we are to pray every day for God's forgiveness: "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." We are in need of God's forgiveness daily, and to receive it we ourselves must forgive others whom we believe have wronged us. This is essential to our well-being--to life and to future life. As Bishop Tutu has titled his book about post-apartheid South Africa, there is "no future without forgiveness." And so we must ourselves participate in forgiveness--the giving and receiving of it. The way our liturgy expresses it I don’t believe can be surpassed: “God is forgiveness...Dare to forgive and God will be with you...Love and do not fear.”
But, we are constrained by many fears, and we are being carried away in directions which we are not fully conscious of...and some of the time clearly, we prefer not to be. Jesus, is free of our constraints however. He is undeterred by fear, either of the Roman or Jewish authorities or the townspeople and crowds..whom he infuriates at times such that they're ready to kill him. Rather, Jesus does what the Father has shown him: healing, teaching, praying, forgiving...speaking truth to the powerful, and the powerless. Even in the agony of the crucifixion, as he watches the men at his feet casting lots for his clothing, to them, he's as good as dead already--he prays "Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing." (Luke 23:32-34)
The magnitude of this act of Jesus --this prayer-- given in the pouring out of his life, can scarcely be apprehended. To what can it even be compared?
We might recollect some incredible acts of forgiveness…Nelson Mandela jumps to mind.. jailed for decades for fighting for freedom for his people, who forgave his jailers. There may even be someone among us in the congregation whose life has challenged them to forgive in extraordinary ways. All of us, doubtless, have been faced with the need to forgive another at some point in our lives, likely on numerous occasions. And we have discovered that words alone miss the mark of real forgiveness.
The fact is, forgiveness cannot be coerced. What, then, if we are not able to forgive, even with the passage of time and our sincere desire to do so? Then, at least let us pray for the needed inner resources to “let go and let God”-- let God release us from hate, from any revenge seeking, and lay this burden too, at His feet. Failing this, we will surely remain imprisoned, whether actually behind bars, or not.
What does deliverance from such imprisonment look like? Let’s turn to the story from today's scripture reading, Luke, 7:36-50. But for context, first I’d like to read the previous verses in Luke [read aloud 7:31-34].
I think this passage sets the stage well for the story of Simon, the righteous Pharisee and the woman about whom all we are told is that she was known as a sinner. Considering the context of the childish "men of today" as just described by Jesus, we might see Simon's righteousness as not much different from child's play, from children attempting to orchestrate a certain desired or expected result: “we played the flute and you did not dance, we wailed and you did not weep."
In Luke’s telling of this story, Jesus has been invited by Simon to dine at his house. A certain ‘sinful’ woman, having heard Jesus would be there, comes and stands at the feet of Jesus as he reclines at table, weeping and then drying his feet with her hair, kissing them and anointing them with perfume. When Simon sees this, he questions in his mind how Jesus could permit this woman to touch him, if in fact he were a prophet. Jesus perceives his thoughts, and tells the following parable:
A moneylender has 2 debtors--one who owes 500 denarii and the other, 50 denarii. He cancels the debt of each man. Jesus asks Simon, which man do you think will love him more?
Simon responds, ‘the man who had the greater debt forgiven--it is he whose love will be greater.’ Jesus acknowledges Simon has judged correctly.Then Jesus makes an interesting comparison. The Pharisee's reception of Jesus into his home is indifferent at best, and is all the more surprising given the possibility Jesus is a prophet. In contrast, the woman's tears and anointing of Jesus’ feet with perfume reveal her warmth, and penitence.... she is both full of love, and aware of the need for forgiveness. What conclusion does Jesus draw by this comparison?
I have used the JB Phillips translation here because its rendering makes a bit more sense to me than some others. In the Phillips’ rendering, it is the woman's love, despite her many sins, that is a testament to her faith in Jesus, and is what brings salvation, as Jesus tells her: “Your sins are forgiven.” Having been forgiven by Jesus, her love for him will abound all the more. As for Simon, he has not undergone such a transformation in his relation to Jesus, he has shown no repentance, nor faith, and Jesus does not say to him, ”your sins are forgiven, your faith has saved you”. His love, seen in short supply in his role as host to Jesus at dinner, receives no added kindling to increase.
This story takes on even more URGENCY if viewed in light of Jesus’s telling of the “Parable of the bags of gold”in Matthew’s gospel, which concludes: "For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken away." The woman, though “a sinner”, expressed sincere love for Jesus; forgiven much, now she has even more love...but it is not too far a stretch to imagine the Pharisee, about whose forgiveness Jesus says only that ‘the one who receives little forgiveness, loves little’--so that even his small love grows smaller, and may die out altogether.
The counsel offered in the Letter to the Ephesians, possibly authored by Paul, (4:31-32), prepares the way of forgiveness: “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath...and be kind to one another, be tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you."
In conclusion, I'd like to read a poem, “What is Forgiveness?” composed by a 12th grade class. I’ll read aloud twice to enable you to hear and meditate on all the lines. And I invite you to speak out loud any line that especially resonates … similar to our practice of lectio divina in our contemplative service.
What is Forgiveness? *
Will it settle on the tip of my tongue,
crisp and sweet as a berry?
Will it hide until I am fully ready?
Will it look me in the eyes again,
smile at the sight of me?
Can it hear me pleading?
Does it taste like thick honey,
or smell like leaves in autumn?
Is it a lightning bolt jumping from cloud to cloud?
Where does it send the problem?
Will it stay up all night and wait for the sun?
~ Poet: Lindsay Sinkovich's 12th grade class
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