Out of the Whirlwind...GOD!

Job questions God … and … in the end … God questions Job
A Shell Ridge Sermon by Greg Ledbetter
(preached* 10/22/06)

In the end, God prefers Job’s courage to the piety of Job’s friends…Devout defiance pleases God. It may even bring God out of hiding, with a roar that lays our ears back against our heads.” – Barbara Brown Taylor

Biblical Text
Job 38:1-7, 34-41

Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind: "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me. "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?

Sermon

Nearly fifteen years ago to this day … I’d been your pastor for all of a month …we’d just finished worship … Jan drove away and then suddenly came driving back into the parking lot … “Greg, they just said on the radio that there’s a bad fire in the Oakland Hills” … a “hot-spot” that they’d thought was out got going again during the previous night … and now all anybody could do was stand and watch … which is what (I’m only a little embarrassed to say) we went and did. We trundled the boys into the car, drove over Wildcat Canyon, north of where the fire was burning, and made our way to Berkeley. We made our way to just below the Claremont Hotel where we joined throngs of people who stood in the hot, smoky night air, slack-jawed, dumbly looking up at the fire that consumed one gorgeous after another.

There really was nothing anyone could do … oh, the helicopters with big buckets of water did their part, but it was only when the fire ran out of fuel at the top of the Berkeley and Oakland ridge that fire became even remotely manageable.

Modern human beings … with all our power and technology and superiority … we modern human beings were rendered mere spectators to the suffering while the non-sentient—unthinking—forces of physics and creation had their way.

Halfway across the Pacific, about a week ago, in the place of my early years of upbringing, the ground shook as ground will at times … it shook mountainsides until they fell … it shook roads until they split … it shook buildings until they collapsed. And the earthquake that struck Hawaii was not considered particularly large.

Once again, modern human beings … with all our power and technology and superiority … we modern human beings were rendered mere spectators to the suffering while the non-sentient—unthinking—forces of physics and creation had their way.

I’ve been in way more hospital rooms than I’d care to tell about … hospital rooms where there’s one kind or another of some wildfire of an awful disease raging inside the person I’m visiting … and in way too many of these cases the top of the ridge for them … the place where their disease ran out of steam, ran out of fuel … was the place of transition for the person from life into the deep mystery beyond life.

And yet another time, modern human beings … with all our power and technology and superiority … we modern human beings were rendered mere spectators to the suffering while the non-sentient—unthinking—forces of physics and creation had their way.

We spoke of Job a couple of weeks ago … and we acknowledged that if there was a single, pulsing theme that ran through Job, a continuous thread, it was a book-long, drawn out, agonizing question that never really gets an answer as we think of answers.

It is a question that got echoed in the title of a book that a Rabbi wrote some twenty years ago after he watched his son die slowly and painfully of a disease that made his son into an old man before he was even a teen. (NOTE: the disease is called progeria)

“Why” Rabbi Harold Kushner agonized in his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, “Why do bad things happen to good people”??? The book so powerfully hit the nail on the head, that it became a runaway bestseller … and it remains a bestseller— especially among Christians.
And “WHY”, the author of the book of Job likewise asks, “Why must our lives be so full of undeserved suffering?” “And is there any meaning to our suffering?” “And … why does God seem to stand idly by while we suffer?” “Where is God?”

I have heard people say “When I die or when I get to heaven or when I stand face to face with my maker, I’m going to ask God ________________________ [insert BIG question here].
What are your questions? Please feel free to speak them aloud … (Two of the questions: Why must little children die of starvation in poor countries? Why is there Alzheimers disease?)
Thank you … in next Sunday’s sermon I’ll come back with answers to ALL of your questions.
Many of your questions are courageous … as Job’s questions are courageous. I’ve always appreciated the courage of the author of the Book of Job and the courage of the Biblical editors who retained the book of Job … Job’s questions are stunning in their boldness … with his questions, Job grabs God by the divine lapels and yammers out one hard, aching question after another.

Job comes off a little like Captain Ahab in Moby Dick … especially in the movie where Gregory Peck playing Captian Ahab has strapped himself to the whale and cries out crazily in the midst of the wind and storm and rain.

So … in Job, we see that Job gets as close to “God’s face” as perhaps any human being ever has. Job “gets into God’s face” … you know that’s a colloquial term that means “confronts” Job has intestinal fortitude.

Who would dare to address God this way? Who would dare to rattle God’s cage so boldly? Within the mindset of Job’s time, I can’t believe that God didn’t “smote” Job … that God didn’t shoot a giant bolt of angry, divine lightening at Job for his audacity … “Take THAT, you little pest.”

And you know, the amazing thing is that Job rants on and on and for the longest time, God doesn’t do a thing … God is completely and utterly silent … God is completely and utterly silent to the point of absence.

And I suppose this represents a crisis of faith … is God only the echoes of our longing? Are we actually alone in this universe and God only the sad fabrication of our existential loneliness and frustration? Let’s not kid ourselves that the people of the so-called “Old Testament” times were crude simpletons … ancient unsophisticated brutes. Long before you and I wondered if there was a God, the author of Job plumbed the depths of that question … perhaps deeper than anyone before or since.

Some of our questions this morning … or perhaps some of the questions that rose up in us that we did not speak … surely have to do with our own crises of faith … our own agnosticism … our own frightening moments of atheism.

I’ve spoken Madeleine L’Engle’s descriptions of the cold, dark waters of atheism that broke over the bow of the vessel of her own faith when running up against inexplicable human cruelties. And St. John of the Cross wrote of the “Dark Night of the Soul” where faith becomes depressed … and then nearly impossible; the soul dry and the spirit listless. I would be lying if I said I did not know such times in my own life and my own faith. It is why I find myself turning and returning to L’Engle and St. John of the Cross and others in my own journey … in my own times of need and struggle.

Have you ever been in a setting where you were scorned for your doubts? Your questions? Your struggle with the neat little pat theological answers that so many seem to prefer? My understanding is that Doug Holmes came to Shell Ridge eleven years ago as a refugee from such a congregation where it was taboo to question the “party line” … taboo to doubt.

The character of Elihu, in the book of Job, represents such a mentality and it’s a mentality that the author of the book of Job is contending against. When Job finally falls silent in his complaint, and before God responds, Elihu jumps up and wrestles the microphone away from Job … he castigates “Job’s friends” … you know, “Job’s comforters” … he rebukes their silence in the face of Job’s suffering … he rebukes them because they are old enough to be wise, but their years have seemed to have taught them nothing.

But Elihu’s hottest anger is reserved for Job whom he believes has wrongly turned his attention from God to his own suffering. He believes Job is WRONG to contend against God … WRONG to lift up his own righteousness before God … WRONG to make his case that he is undeserving of his dreadful fate.

I don’t know that it’s that Elihu is wrong in what he says … much of it is pretty hard to argue with. It’s that in the face of such great suffering, it’s the wrong answer at the wrong time to Job’s question.

And note the name of the book, by the way, isn’t “Elihu” … it’s “Job” … Job, ultimately is the “hero” of this story … and as the hero, Job’s questions and the courage it took for Job to cry out in righteous despair and frustration to God is, in fact, heroic.

And it’s why I return again and again to this “hard nut” of a Biblical book … the book of Job. The theological view in the book of Job represents a stubborn streak in the ancient Hebrew soul that refuses to believe that God has abandoned God’s creation, refuses to believe that the universe is not somehow still within the bounds of God’s care. Job will not let go of God even though it may seem that God has let go of Job.

And so here Job is … and maybe here we are … Job is spent … he is physically spent … he is emotionally spent … and he’s down to his last theological dime. His faith is almost flat-busted, there-ain’t-nothin’-left-in-the-cupboards broke. This friendly little wager between God and Satan, with which Job’s story begins … has just about made a winner out of Satan.

And now what? I like Barbara Brown Taylor’s take on this text. She claims that "for most of us, the worst thing that can happen is not to suffer without reason, but to suffer without God – without any hope of consolation or rebirth." We can get angry and even impolite, she says: "In the end, God prefers Job’s courage to the piety of Job’s friends…Devout defiance pleases God. It may even bring God out of hiding, with a roar that lays our ears back against our heads …”
And out of hiding God comes … with a vengeance.

Jan hates it when I get too loud in the pulpit … when my voice strains … and children start looking scared. But how else are you going to depict God’s response??? God doesn’t speak in the still small voice of Elijah on Mt. Horeb. This time God IS in the wind … in the storm … in the loud clapping thunder. People who have lived in the Midwest and survived a deadly twister say that the twisters, when they pass by, sound like a thousand locomotives thundering past.
God speaks out of the whirlwind … God speaks out of the twister … and if God’s voice is to be heard over the sound of a thousand locomotives, then God is speaking UP … and speaking OUT … and speaking LOUD.

Do you get it? God is not silent. God is not absent. God IS.

Now be sure that what God has to say to Job doesn’t “feel” very kindly … it is a divine, rhetorical blast that burns every last hair off of Job’s head … but God is speaking to Job “face to face” … and Job, finally says in response to God … “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” That is to say, that God had finally become REAL to Job.

Yesterday, Jan and I were privileged to get to attend the Cal/University Washington football game (Thank you, Robert Scheid!). We sat on the aisle in the “blue section” 50 rows up. Part way through the game, I noticed someone coming up the long flight of stairs. It was woman whose progress stopped and started, stopped and started. I turned my attention back to the game, but when she got a little closer, I looked again and saw the reason for her halting progress. In her hand, climbing the stairs with her was a little girl, perhaps three or four years old. The little girl was dressed up in a pint-sized replica Cal Bears cheerleader’s uniform. Her right hand was grasped by the woman’s hand. And in her right hand was a tiny white cane that bobbed about. The little girl’s eyes were closed and suddenly I understood. (NOTE: I add, parenthetically, that the scene was so plaintive that my eyes instantly teared, though neither the woman nor the little girl asked for—nor needed—my pity nor even my sympathy..)

Now I watched discretely for a few moments as the grandmother—we later concluded—and her granddaughter made their way slowly up the stairs. It was clear that the grandmother was there to serve as the girl’s “anchor” … to hold her hand while the girl learned to “make her way” in the world. There was nothing the grandmother could do to alleviate the child’s blindness, but she was learning to make it on her own. So here was this little frail whisp of a child … lost in a screaming sea of humanity … 50,000+ of us … with a mountain of stairs ahead, an enormous journey for such a one … and what made all the difference was the familiar hand of Grandma in hers.

Might this be the story of Job in a nutshell? In being drawn out of himself—in the time of great affliction, Job was given … no answer … no protection … not even healing … only God. Only God! Do we get it? Contrary to what some might see as the evidence, God is not silent. God is not absent. God IS.

There’s an old Swedish spiritual the echoes the experience of one who has come face to face with God, one who has come to know in spite of all the reasons we might have to not believe, that God is real.

O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder
consider all the works thy hand hath made,
I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder,
thy power throughout the universe displayed:

Then sings my soul, my Savior God; to thee,
How great thou art, how great thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Savior God; to thee,
How great thou art, how great thou art!

Prayer
God of the whirlwind, heart of our hearts, soul of our souls, source of our life, it is you who have brought us into being in this time and this place. You feed us each day with the fruit of your earth. You quench our thirst with water that courses through our bodies. Oxygen created by you fills our lungs and without the continuous flow of your Spirit through us and all creation we would not exist. You are the never-ending flow and the ongoing process of all life and we are your creatures. Hear us now as we call to you.

There are things about our world that we do not understand
and matters for which there are no words but only feelings. Hear our prayers, O God, as we speak aloud our prayers to you:

Names are spoken out of the congregation …

Gentle, great, merciful, loving God:
In the quiet curve of evening, in the sinking of the days,
In the silky void of darkness, you are there.
In the lapses of my breathing, in the space between my ways,
in the crater carved by sadness, you are there.

In the rests between the phrases, in the cracks between the stars,
In the gaps between the meaning, you are there.
In the melting down of endings, in the cooling of the sun,
in the solstice of the winter, you are there.
In the mystery of my hungers, in the silence of my rooms,
In the cloud of my unknowing, you are there.
In the empty cave of grieving, in the desert of my dreams,
in the tunnel of my sorrow, you are there.*
Amen.

*Concluding poem: In the Quiet Curve of Evening …
Words, music copyright © 1993, Juliana Howard,
www.wearethecircle.com. Used by permission.

Sending Forth
Benediction for All Voices:
Let us leave this place
knowing that wherever we go,
God has already gone there before us,
speaking a word of healing.
And may the blessing of God,
Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer,
be with us in all the places of our lives,
this day and always. Amen.

Wrestling Minds, Wringing Hands

The Doctor is “IN”: Hope for Hurting Minds
A Shell Ridge Sermon by Greg Ledbetter (preached* 10/08/06)
This sermon was preached on the occasion of
our observance of “Mental Health Awareness Sunday”

Our preacher, Veronica, said recently that this is life’s nature: that lives and hearts get broken, those of people we love, those of people we’ll never meet. She said that the world sometimes feels like the waiting room of the emergency ward and that we who are more or less OK for now, need to take the tenderest possible care of the more wounded people in the waiting room until the healer comes. You sit with people, she said, you bring them juice and graham crackers.”
– Anne Lamott

Biblical Text
Job 1:1, 2:1-10

There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.

One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the LORD. The LORD said to Satan, "Where have you come from?" Satan answered the LORD, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it." The LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason." Then Satan answered the LORD, "Skin for skin! All that people have they will give to save their lives. But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face." The LORD said to Satan, "Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life." So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD, and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes. Then his wife said to him, "Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die." But he said to her, "You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?" In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

Sermon

PEANUTS: Lucy is sitting in her little booth with the DOCTOR IS IN sign prominently displayed. Charlie Brown is sitting in front on a little stool, and Lucy says, "you know what you’re problem is, Charlie Brown? The problem with you is that you’re you." He’s crushed, so Charlie Brown asks, "Well, what in the world can I do about that?" Lucy says in the final frame, "Sorry, I don’t give advice. I just point out the problem."

The problem with you is that you’re you. And the problem with me is that I’m me. So … what do you do with the unique burden of being “you”? And what do I do with the unique burden of being “me”?

I had been a pastor for about five years … a husband for about seven … a father for about 3 … and I kind of felt like my new favorite comedian, Brian Regan, who tells of himself, “I’m just trying to get through life without screwing up too badly, and so far it’s not going too well.”
So, when the burden began to feel larger than I could manage on my own, I decided to seek out someone who could help me bear it … and perhaps understand it. A friend told me about the Good Samaritan counseling center in Glens Falls, New York … and so I started commuting each week through the lovely rural stretches between our village and the upstate mill town of Glens Falls.

Joe Roberts was my counselor … a former American Baptist minister from New Jersey who turned to the “healing arts” … Joe was a great listener … and I was a pretty good talker. I talked and Joe mostly listened for about 2 ½ years. Then I was “fixed” and I moved to California …  … rrrrright!

Joe was not a pietist … he was not given to casually tossing out “pat religious solutions” to emotional challenges … but I do remember him saying, in whatever part of your life your are experiencing your challenges … invite Jesus into that area, even if it’s an inner place, an inner predicament where you wouldn’t want to be caught dead, invite Jesus in … don’t be embarrassed.

I wish I had known of Anne Lamott’s writing when Joe said that to me because I would have loved to have quoted her, saying right back to him, “You know, Joe, If Jesus knew what I was thinking now, he'd drink gin straight out of the cat dish.”

Dear friends, invite Jesus in … don’t be embarrassed … don’t hide your inner self and you inner pain from God … bring it all … the good … the bad … the ugly … and maybe especially the ugly … bring it all. Joe helped me.

It’s too bad that Job didn’t have a Joe Roberts he could confide in. Same with King Saul and his “evil spirit” and the prophet Elijah out miserable and alone in the desert. All of these were afflicted in one way or another. Job’s life took this miserable, hideous turn that only seemed explainable by conjuring this bizarre conversation between …. spffff … God and Satan … God tells Satan about Job, [etc.] … Satan says, “Lemme at ‘im … I’ll turn your boy to mush in no time … then see how he curses you to your face.” And bizarrely, God, in effect says: “Sure … go ahead, he’s tough, do what you want—just don’t kill him. May this is where the saying: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” And you thought that originated in child-rearing … or marriage or … insert your own challenge here … “Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes.”

Many scholars think that the part of Job in which this odd exchange between God and Satan occurs is tacked on to the original story. They also think that about the “lived happily ever after” ending, as well.

But the original part of Job is the long story of his suffering and the deep crisis that it puts him in. He is in agony as he loses his belongings and his family and his health. Job’s agony is complete … it is physical, emotional, spiritual and existential. Perhaps Job needed even more than my friend Joe Roberts could have offered. Suffice it to say that Job suffered … and the book of Job is about suffering.

And I want to suggest that the beginning of the book of Job … the odd, almost hallucinogenic introduction is one way of trying to express just how baffling and bewildering undeserved suffering is when it comes our way. And I would further suggest that when it is the suffering of one who is emotionally ill, it may be the most baffling and bewildering of all.

Mental illness often hits without warning, changing the interior of the mind and changing the exterior of the person so afflicted. Whether or not it has hereditary roots for any given individual, it can be for him or her a profound curse … and it can feel as though divine beings are playing some kind of cruel joke with the afflicted one as its butt.

Mental illness takes a terrible toll. I read recently—and these are broad figures, but I read recently that in America alone, during any one year, up to 50 million Americans suffer from a clearly diagnosable mental disorder. Depression affects nearly one in every ten Americans.
We can put a face on this by saying that in a congregation the size of ours, given the averages, we expect that somewhere around 14 of us suffer from depression. I know that a number of you have been courageous in sharing your own experiences, your own challenges and struggles. You have helped others of us as we have tried to understand our own inner geography with its potholes and sinkholes and even dark abysses.

Rick Mitchell wrote courageously in our September Newsletter of his own struggles that ranged from medical challenges to emotional challenges. One of Rick’s named challenges was anger … which was one of the issues that sent me to Joe Roberts. Rick said:

Looking back in my family, there was not always the acceptance of getting help, especially where mental health issues were concerned. While my father wasn't physically abusive (by the standards of his day), family life was often tense, and psychological/verbal abuse occurred more often than it should have. We are so thankful that this cyclic family pattern has been reduced and hopefully eliminated through help gained from medical and counseling assistance we have received.

Let’s put another kind of face on mental illness … each year, some 5000 young people, aged 15 to 24, commit suicide in America, with thousands more adults taking their lives. Suicide usually ranks first or second among causes of death of teens and young adults.

If it wasn’t obvious before, let us say it now that mental health can be a matter of life and death … and it should be a matter of deep concern for everyone … including those of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus. Rick Mitchell went on to say in concluding his column:

Does all this have anything to do with the church's life and mission? You bet it does! It's often been said that God has "no hands but our hands," and I believe that one of God's most favored channels of help for hurting humanity is through those who've made a personal commitment to the 'helping professions.' We can all do our part by being accepting, supportive, and understanding of others' needs -- and our own.

There are at least three areas where people of faith and their congregations can help, ways we can express our loving concern for those afflicted with the undeserved suffering of mental illness:

The importance of destigmatizing mental illness

“The Doctor is “IN” … I wonder if Charles Schultz knew what a service he performed in help to destigmatize seeking help for one’s emotional needs. Insofar as Charlie Brown represented a kind of “every man”, with the help of Charles Schultz, we came to accept the fact that it was OK to be in need of advice, it was OK to admit that our lives were not entirely manageable on our own, it was OK … of course, Schultz’s strips are often deeper than meets the eye.

John Ortberg suggests, rather interestingly, that Jesus himself—whether he knew it or not, implicitly helped lay the ground for the destigmatizing of our inner struggles that can set us apart from others:

Jesus lived a common life. He let his friends see him in unveiled moments of joy, sadness, anger, and fatigue. Jesus’ followers never had to guess whether he was delighted or disappointed. As life was nearing its end, he did not try to convince them he was filled with optimism. He was so transparent, he took the risk of openness and said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.

The importance of reminding strugglers of their innate value and love-worthiness.
Elise Elrod … a transgendered woman from Peace Camp … formerly a successful businessman and pastor before her sexual reassignment surgery … accepting herself has been a long, arduous struggle … she had us repeat at Peace Camp this summer: “I … Y … Q … Y … Q … R”. Now say that faster and faster until you “get it”. (I like you like you are.) Those are important words for all persons … they are words the welcoming and healing church must speak without reservation … and to the words the church must add actions that support the words.

The importance of a supporting community for all of our minds’ times.

Consider the paralyzed man being carried by the four “stretcher-bearers” … what a wonderful image of a community that has learned to serve each other, to be “wounded healers” to one another.

Paul loved to speak of the church as a body, using the human body as a metaphor for the body of faith … in the body there must be great sympathy among all the parts, those that are prominent and those that are modest … Paul suggested that we do well to learn to laugh and cry with one another … and Paul seems to echo the story from the gospels when, in Galatians, he says: “Bear one another’s burdens and thus fulfill the law.” (Galatians 6:2)

Paul was a wise preacher, and there are wise preachers all around today from whom we can learn in our growth toward being a welcoming and healing congregation.

I like what Rabbi Barry Block told his Chicago congregation recently in a sermon … and might they be challenging, truing words for us here as we seek to be a supporting community? He said:

I pray that our congregation will always be a safe and comfortable place for people with emotional traumas and mental illness. May our hearts be open, reaching out to our neighbors in the hour of deepest depression. May our minds be open, seeking to understand the person whose behavior has become difficult to comprehend. May our doors be open, even to the folks whose mental illnesses have made them most difficult to accept. Let us welcome them all in our congregation and community, with love and caring, with dignity and respect.

In her wonderful memoir of faith, Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott writes about her wise pastor at her Presbyterian church in Marin County:

“Broken things have been on my mind recently and in the lives of people I love. Our wonderful friend Ken died of AIDS—not long after, my friend, Mimi, began to die after a long struggle with a rare blood disease . . .Our preacher, Veronica, said recently that this is life’s nature: that lives and hearts get broken, those of people we love, those of people we’ll never meet. She said that the world sometimes feels like the waiting room of the emergency ward and that we who are more or less OK for now, need to take the tenderest possible care of the more wounded people in the waiting room until the healer comes. You sit with people, she said, you bring them juice and graham crackers.” (p. 106)

One last wise preacher, John Buchanan speaks of: “the least of the least.” These are the ones who are at the bottom of the cultural food chain … those who are pushed out to the farthest margins of existence … these “least of the least” are the ones about whom Jesus spoke when he said: “in as much as you have done it to the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you have done it to me.” The “least of the least” are the ones to whom Jesus directs us to aim our care … and it’s a caring that is intended not just for “the other”, but for all of us, the “least of the least” beyond us as well as the “least of the least” within us each.

Preacher Buchanan says:

The good news is that the healer has come, the “wounded healer,” to use Henri Nouwen’s striking image: the one who touches the leper, the one who welcomes into the kingdom all those on the outside looking in wistfully, the lonely, the isolated, the unloved, the unwanted, the marginal, you and me when we are quarantined for whatever reason, worried, afraid, anxious, guilty, sick in body and soul—reaches out and touches us. The good news is that the healer has come. Jesus is his name.

Dear friends, invite Jesus in … don’t be embarrassed … don’t hide your inner self and your inner pain from God … bring it all … the good … the bad … the ugly … and maybe especially the ugly … bring it all … bring it all … bring it all.

Let us pray:

Psalm 23
a paraphrase by Leslie Brandt
in PSALMS NOW

The Lord is my constant companion.
There is no need that God cannot fulfill.
Whether God’s course for me points
to the mountaintops of glorious ecstasy
or to the valleys of human suffering,
God is by my side,
God is ever present with me.
God is close beside me
when I tread the dark streets of danger,
and even when I flirt with death itself,
God will not leave me.
When the pain is severe,
God is near to comfort.
When the burden is heavy,
God is there to lean upon.
When depression darkens my soul,
God touches me with eternal joy.
When I feel empty and alone,
God fills the aching vacuum with God’s power.
My security is in God’s promise
to be near to me always,
and in the knowledge
that God will
never let me go.

We sing together:
O God we call, O God we call,
from deep inside we yearn, from deep inside we yearn,
from deep inside we yearn for you.
Amen.

Sending Forth
Benediction for All Voices:
As children of God we know we are loved.
With all our questions we know we are accepted.
Let us go forth boldly from this place
to love and serve God in every situation that faces us.
And may the blessing of God –
birth-giver, pain-bearer and life-bringer –
be with us now and always. Amen.

For Such a Time as This

On Taking Risks & Embracing a Spiritual Broad-Mindedness
A Shell Ridge Sermon by Greg Ledbetter (preached* 10/01/06)

If we do not learn to live together as brothers and sisters,
we are going to perish together as fools.

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

SERMON TEXTS: Esther 4:14; 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22 & Mark 9:38-50

For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.’ Esther 4:14

John said to him, ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.’ But Jesus said, ‘Do not stop him … whoever is not against us is for us. Portions of Mark 9:38-40

SERMON
For Jews, a new year began on the evening September 22nd … for Jews we are now in the year 5767. Perhaps you remember the old classic, “In the year 5767 …” Rosh Hashanah is the first day of the new year and begins a 10 day period of “high holy days” that culminates with the highest holy day in Judaism, which is Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement. At sundown tonight, Yom Kippur begins. It is the most solemn day of the Jewish year.

For Muslims, Ramadan started on September 24th. This is the most holy time in the annual Muslim calendar. Muslims believe that during Ramadan, the ninth month of the Muslim calendar, the Holy Qur’an was sent down from heaven. It was revealed to the prophet Muhammad by the angel Gabriel as “a guidance for mortals, a declaration of direction, and a means of salvation.”

The month of Ramadan is a time of worship and contemplation during which Muslims concentrate on their faith and spend less time on the concerns of everyday life. Daylight hours are spent in fasting, prayer, and study of the Qur’an.

At the end of the day, the fast is broken, but it is resumed the next morning. Ramadan ends with the holiday of Id-al-Fitr (the Feast of Fast Breaking), three days of celebration with gifts, meals, and prayer. (from Seasons of the Spirit)

And for Christians—Doug Brown, what Sunday in the liturgical year is this again? … wait … I think it is the 17th Sunday of the lesser feast of St. Douglas the ill-humored … or was it St. Douglas of Lingua … a highly quotable figure who said, rather famously, “don’t need no stinking lectionary”.

Actually, Catholic Christians remember today St. Therese of Lisieux who is, perhaps the second most popular catholic saint after St. Francis of Assisi whose feast is this coming Wednesday, October 4th.

While Christians are not uniform in their observation of this Sunday, many Christians around the world choose this first Sunday in October to celebrate that in spite of our many differences, followers of Christ come around the same table and break the bread of Christ’s body and receive the cup of Christ’s blood.

So in the Muslim world there is a major time of introspection and deepening of faith going on … and in the Jewish world there is a major time of reflection and atonement going on … and in the Christian world … we, uh, come together to eat.

While for Christians, this time is not particularly notable beyond the celebration of worldwide communion, these are the highest and holiest of days for Jews and Muslims. Together with Jews and Muslims, we three faiths represent the off-spring of Abraham and Sarah …we’re often called the Abrahamic faiths …

Now you don’t have to be a basher of all things religious to yet be able to acknowledge that these three faiths alone have been at the center of many of the world’s bloodiest and most horrific conflicts. Father Abraham and Mother Sarah must drench their graves with their tears over the way their offspring have sometimes spoiled the inheritance that Abraham claimed.

The recently ended war in Lebanon is just the latest example of Jews and Arabs battling it out … and of course internally Lebanon is a barely contained hotbed of animosities between Christian, Arab and Jew. And, of course we know that the highly un-civil war that is breaking out in Iraq is between competing versions of Islam … Sunni and Shia …

As the song that I wrote just after 9/11 asks it:

When will the offspring of Sarah and Ab-a-ra-ham
Gather 'round the fam'ly tree?
God and Allah are one, Jews and Arabs are kin,
No one is safe 'til all are free.

(Children Keep Asking Why – Words/GHL-Music/Neal Young)

So it occurs to me that in the midst of these holy seasons and holy wars, that the time is right for leaders of good faith (and I say that with as little self-conscious irony as I can) … the time is right for leaders of good faith from each of these traditions to come together for the purpose of making peace among the children of Abraham … and Sarah. And would that our own American Baptist General Secretary, Roy Medley, would stand and be among the first of those leaders to join in such a gathering.

There actually are some precedents for such gatherings. An “Abraham Summit” was held at a Jewish temple in Washington, D.C. in October of 2002. The summit partly conceived by Bruce Feiler who is the author of “A Walk through the Bible” and “Abraham”. Feiler also initiated “Abraham Salons” where people within the same community could come together and discuss their faiths … their differences … and their similarities.

TIME Magazine in that same year put Abraham on its cover … saying: “Jews, Christians, Muslims all claim him as their father … can he be their peacemaker?”

This entire, long introduction simply leads me to two people in the Bible whose words and actions give us some small hope that we can play our own part in the healing of the great drama of conflict among people of faith in our world.

Playing that part takes a measure of courage that is willing to put one’s own self on the line and take risks … and playing that part also takes a measure of what I would call “spiritual broad-mindedness”.

The two Biblical people are Queen Esther of the Old Testament … the Hebrew Testament … and Jesus.

First, the story of Queen Esther as told by Tamar Frankiel …

The original setting of the Esther story, in ancient Persia, is set in a time when the Jews of the realm were under threat of their lives. Haman, the king’s appointed minister, was an anti-Semite of the first order (indeed, this is the first major evidence of the people being called “Jews” rather than “Israelites” or members of a tribe). His personal grudge against Mordecai was translated into a determination to destroy all of Mordecai’s people. He had persuaded the king that the Jews were dangerous because they kept their own customs – suggesting they might be traitors to the king. A decree was issued that on a certain specific day, chosen by lot, the 13th of the Jewish month of Adar, all Jews in all the Persian provinces would be attacked and killed.

No one doubted that this decree could be carried out. Like most emperors of the era, King Ahasuerus ruled with an iron hand. He may have advisers, but once a law was signed, there was no reprieve.

But, as the biblical story tells us, it so happened that Ahasuerus had chosen as his queen the beautiful Esther who, unbeknownst to him or any of the court, was a Jew. Mordecai appealed to her to find a way to step in. Yet she knew that if Ahasuerus rejected her, even for some trivial reason, she would die. Would she take the risk?

Esther’s decision comes as the pivotal point of the story. Mordecai appeals to her: perhaps you have been put in this place for just this reason!*

*Dr. Tamar Frankiel is
Dean of Students and Professor of Comparative Religion
at the Academy for Jewish Religion, California,
a transdenominational rabbinical,
cantorial, and chaplaincy school.
She is author of numerous
books on Jewish spirituality.

And now Jesus … the quintessential anti-terrorist of his time … he doesn’t drape himself with murderous intent toward all who were not with him—whether they be Samaritans or Jews who opposed him or the Roman empire … and he does not spout violence inciting invective like:

“Whoever is not FOR us is AGAINST us!” … no … Jesus quite oppositely declares that: “Whoever is not against us is for us.” There is, in Jesus’ words, what might be called a “spiritual broad-mindedness” that cuts against the militant, triumphant creedalism of his time … and ours.

We need religious leaders in our world who understand that the time for conversation about the decidedly mixed blessing that religion is for the world is NOW … we need religious leaders of all faiths who are blessed with the feckless courage of Esther and who understand that if they are to be more blessing than burden in this conversation, they will be of a mindset typified by the spiritual broad-mindedness of Jesus. Whoever is not against us is for us.

CONCLUSION (a blend of what was written and what was actually said):

There is a new documentary movie out called “Jesus Camp”. From the little I’ve heard, it is one of those “be afraid, be very afraid” kinds of documentaries. I want to be clear that I have not yet seen the movie, but I am led to understand that it is about a Christian summer camp that is all about teaching little Christian boys and girls to be good warriors for their Lord, fighting the good fight against everyone who is not like them. And I suppose there are elsewhere on this aching planet … Muslim camps … Zionist camps … where little Muslim and little Zionist boys and girls are being taught to be warriors for their faiths. And it strikes me that they all may well be hastening the day when God will return, but not to end the world as these might think in a judgment that vindicates their narrow versions of faith, but when God will return to stand and weep over the smoking ruins of earth … making painfully and profoundly true Martin King’s sad warning: If we do not learn to live together as brothers and sisters, we are going to perish together as fools.

Now I want to contrast “Jesus Camp” with the simply named “Summer Camp” at the “Oasis of Peace” at Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salaam community in Israel. Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salaam is an intentional peace-making community where Jews and Arabs live together peacefully and productively. This Jewish/Arab community is a living model in a land where there are many who are skeptical of this possibility.

This summer, a dozen young adults who grew up at Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam hosted a week-long camp for 10-12 year-old Palestinian children from refugee camps. Acting as camp counselors, chaperones, and activities organizers, young residents from the “Oasis of Peace” demonstrated the profound impact they can have on the region by touching the lives of Palestinian girls and boys who had never met someone from “the other side.” Organized and directed by Ranin Boulos, age 22, activities included swimming, arts & crafts, drama, music, nature hikes, soccer, dancing, and even a special performance by the Arab-Jewish Youth Circus, as well as field trips to the Arab-Hebrew Theatre of Jaffa, a tour of Old Jaffa, a trip to the beach, sailing, and a tour of Jerusalem including a visit to the Biblical Zoo. The young Jewish and Arab organizers from Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam created an experience that not only affected the lives of the children who participated, but also changed the lives of the organizers as well.

“I didn’t think these kids would have this much impact on me. We got really, really attached to these kids,” said Ranin. “Now, they have hope. They came here and saw that there are different people … they even started learning a few words in Hebrew. They loved our village, and the impact of the village on these kids was very clear Now they realize that things can be different. When they grow up, they will realize ... They have memories.”

Link to complete article: http://www.nswas.com/article576.html

And how about at “Camp Shell Ridge”? … what do we find here? I hope we find a community more like Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam … a “Jesus Camp” that lives out, not a spiritual narrow-mindedness of fundamentalist faiths, but a spiritual broad-mindedness that Jesus demonstrated when he said: “… those who are not against us are for us.”

It is my hope, further, that every communion Sunday at Shell Ridge will be one form or another of “Worldwide Communion Sunday” …

It is my hope that every time of worship at Shell Ridge is a time of acknowledging that God is the God of all people of whom we are one family … a deeply beloved family, of course, but one of many beloved families, nonetheless.

It is my hope that every time our children gather to learn in this place:

• They will be taught and they will learn that there are many members in the diverse, worldwide Christian family and that God loves us all,
• They will be taught and they will learn that there are many children in many faiths in the world who claim Abraham and Sarah as their ancestor and that God loves them all;
• They will be taught and they will learn that their Christian faith is a good and noble faith in a world of many good and noble faiths and God loves them all.
• They will be taught and they will learn that they are a part of God’s plan to bring peace with justice

I pray that within the collective consciousness of the children of Abraham there is yet a seed that is preparing to germinate … a seed of justice … a seed of peace … a seed of hope … a seed that will sprout and grow into a new family tree … a family tree that is sturdy and fruitful and protective and a thing of beauty for all to see.

But it will take time … it will take courageous voices of spiritual broad-mindedness being raised above the din of the religious zealots … and it will take more time and more courage, still. As the last verse of my song tries to tell it:

When can we stop running, when can we weary lie down?
Not for a long, long, long while.
Labor for peace, children, labor for justice come 'round.
Labor for earth, reconciled. (GHL)

Amen.

*The sermon above is a slightly edited version of what was preached on the Sunday noted. My sermons typically go into the pulpit in what I think of as a “rough, but preachable” form. They are, however, rarely in a form that is ready for immediate publication.

For Additional Reflection:

Seasons of the Spirit

Challenge
Just as Esther took her stand and acted to preserve life, and as Mark’s community exercised hospitality in times of risk, to welcome and shelter those who are vulnerable still requires our courageous action today. In such a time as today, who waits on your action and courage? What aspect of your identity as God’s child may be hidden, in need of claiming for God’s work in this time and place?

Prayer
Help us, O God, to recognize the times in which we live and to choose to live faithfully. Grant us courage to stand with and speak for those at risk. As we are able, help us to preserve community and redeem the time you entrust into our hands. Amen.


Keep It and Live It, That’s All.

A thousand cults, a thousand creeds,
Is one a rose and the rest all weeds,
Or is each one suited to meet some needs?
Is your own so great that the rest seem small?
Then keep it and live it, that’s all.

Pagan, or Christian, Gentile or Jew,
How may you know that your own is true?
Not for him or for me or for others, but you,
To live by, to die by, to stand or to fall,
Why, keep it and live it, that’s all.

When the wolves of the world are on your back,
Does it help you to beat the mad pack back,
To laugh at the snap of the snarling pack,
Does it leap in your heart like a huntsman’s call?
Then keep it and live it, that’s all.

When the strong are cruel and the weak oppressed,
Does it help you to help? Does it sting in your breast?
Does it sob in your soul with a wild unrest,
To fight against might and let nothing appall?
Then keep it and live it, that’s all.

When the last fight comes and you take your stand,
And the sword of your strength breaks out of your hand
And the ground ‘neath your feet turns to shifting sand,
Does your religion sing when your back’s at the wall?
Then keep it, it’s yours and that’s all.
--Edmund Vance Cooke

Who Is Great?

Mark 9:30-37

The poor disciples … they just can’t seem to get it right. They just don’t quite “get” Jesus … something’s not clicking … not computing … Jesus’ message seems pretty straight-forward … embrace suffering … sacrifice your self for the sake of others … pick up your cross and carry it gladly.

Nope. It’s not getting through. Jesus tells the twelve what any cub reporter could have predicted … you can’t go around poking both Rome and the Jewish religious establishment in the eyes without expecting them to come ‘round and see who’s doing the poking. These were the types who both got mad AND got even.

So Jesus predicts his death … it’s the price he knows he has to pay for showing the powers-that-be just how seamy and corrupt they were. He tells his followers that he’s going to be murdered.

I stood this summer in the bookstore at the Martin Luther King National Monument in Atlanta … and they were playing a tape of King’s last sermon … perhaps his best known sermon. It was April 3, 1968 … it was the eve of a protest march for striking garbage workers in Memphis, Tennessee. It was a darkly prophetic speech:

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

The next day Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

When Martin King tells his listeners that he knows his young life could come to an end at any time, there is a knowing tone in their “Amens” and their “My, my, Lords” …

But when Jesus tells his disciples that without a doubt he will be murdered, there is only confusion and bewilderment. Peter has already been boxed around the ears for trying to get Jesus to stop talking about his pending death. Jesus even calls him Satan for being so obtuse. And with Jesus having now predicted his death for a second time … the disciples just don’t know what to do.

If Jesus really was the messiah … God’s chosen … God’s anointed … if the Spirit of God really did blow through Jesus, wouldn’t he have the power to resist his enemies? Wouldn’t he be able to claim life out of the trash heaps of death that were all around???

And mind you, Mark is shaping his narrative—his story—at a time when Rome was marching against Jerusalem and when Judaism and Christianity were being cleaved apart by the brutal sword of historical reality. What God had joined together was being torn asunder by the march of history.

So if the original disciples didn’t “get it” … certainly Mark’s audience … disciples of the next generation “got it” … in fact like the sad inhabitants of modern day Iraq they were “getting it” all the time.

But the disciples are too bound up in how they think the story should end. They are not open to a new ending … a new outcome.

Now Jesus goes on to say that if death—his death even—is the predictable old ending, there is yet another ending beyond that they need to believe in … that from the old deathly ending will come life again.

Well … it’s not getting through. And now they’re too frightened … too intimidated to even ask a clarifying question. This was, of course, before the saying was invented: “The only dumb question is the one you don’t ask.” Obviously Jesus was not a modern elementary school teacher. But apparently the other saying the disciples abided by had been invented which was: “Better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”

But … perhaps there’s another possible reason the disciples were “afraid” to ask Jesus any more questions … might it been because they were afraid that they in fact DID understand and didn’t like what they thought they understood? That they didn’t like the answer they thought they’d get? Perhaps among the disciples was the dawning but terrifying awareness that the coming kingdom of God … the reign of God’s Spirit … was not as they imagined. It would not protect the son of God from being killed. It would not dismantle the lethal energies of the principalities and powers like Rome. It would not end human suffering and oppression or reverse all hatred and greed. Whatever else Jesus’ life and ministry and his announcement of the nearness of God’s realm meant, it did not mean the peaceable kingdom was about to spring into full earthly reality any time soon.

Well, questions or no questions … and … answers or no answers, the journey continues. And the disciples decide they may as well clear up the burning question of the pecking order among themselves. I know that’s what I want clarified when all else is going to hell in a hand-basket around me.

You know, these journeys by foot … even within the cozy confines of Palestine … still took a long time. The disciples had a lot of time to talk … and Jesus had a lot of time to listen. And apparently Mark wants us to understand that Jesus gave free reign for their traveling conversation to devolve as absurdly as it did. And possibly we hear echoes of later controversies where the early church begins to line up behind this apostle or that apostle and the early hairline cracks of schism and church splits are beginning to show.

Certainly to our modern ears, arguing over who is greater than whom sounds ridiculous. Jen, my hermeneutical theory kicks your hermeneutical theory’s booty. Trevor, you alliterate far better than I do—in your dreams! Jodie, you’ll never be as tall as I am.
See how ridiculous it all sounds?

But if we’ve learned anything in our modern day, we’ve learned how to preserve the old behaviors, the old realities … but without being so crass about it. Our possessions … our vocations … our bright shining children … our toys … our travel destinations … the books we read and the plays we attend … there are so many ways to subtly, but unmistakably show our “greatness”.

Or perhaps it’s our tendency to feel better about ourselves when we see how miserable someone else is … do you remember the Pharisee’s prayer? 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector.
How about our unspoken prayers? I thank God I’m not like that street person … or like that person who is emotionally troubled … or that person who is going through a difficult time … or that person who is driving their smoking, battered heap of a car next to my glistening late model masterpiece of automotive technology.

When we are practicing the subtle art of self-elevation, we cease to become useful building blocks in building “a house where all may come” … we cease to become useful building blocks in building a new world of peace with justice … we cease to become useful building blocks in building Shalom.

And then … JESUS SAT DOWN … uh, oh … the rabbi has sat down and we know he’s not happy. Here comes a “teaching moment” … the kind of “teaching moment” you know you’re going to wish you hadn’t somehow deserved.

“Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” It is the great reversal of the gospel as simply put as it could be.

Martin Luther King had a way with words and expanded Jesus’ thought just a bit:
Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness … recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness.… it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.

Too bad Martin King wasn’t standing by to help elucidate matters for the disciples. So … fearing the disciples deepening denseness, Jesus chooses to make it even simpler for them. He puts a child in their midst and clutches the child in his arms.

Coming as it does in the middle of this very difficult teaching about discipleship, Jesus’ drawing a child into their midst puts the child in a dangerous place and should create a lot of dissonance in our thinking about what he is trying to say to us about being a disciple.

To be sure, this is not a pleasant little teaching about “let the little children come to me” … you know, the one where Jesus is depicted as a smiling, Mr. Rogers in a beard and a robe who lets the little children crawl over him like a living playground sculpture.

If painters portrayed this passage on canvas, the child would be wide-eyed and terrified … pulling away from Jesus’ grasp and not at all happy at being the center of this moment of attention.

Once again, children are caught in the crossfire …

Talk of death and difficulty and painful sacrifice are in the air and it’s not a conversation that a child would want to get caught in … and this child is probably more than a little sorry that she’d been caught listening in. And who knows? … maybe this child’s participation in this dramatic demonstration of the ways of Jesus will help her “get” and “remember” what the older, male disciples just can seem to comprehend.

With the child clutched in his arms, Jesus says: “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me,” and these words are meant to convey the same message as “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

Jesus has in his arms what is surely, by anyone’s definition, “the least of these” … children who have, perhaps the least power, are the most voiceless, have no status to speak of. … and I have to wonder if this is a parallel teaching with Matthew 25 where Jesus speaks of the “least of these”. Whereas Jesus’ story in Matthew 25—the separation of the sheep and the goats in the time of judgment—paints a word picture for his listeners, in Mark, it is a wide-eyed child thrust into their midst that tells the whole story. “Just as you did it to one of the least of these … you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40) becomes in the graphic urgency of Mark’s gospel: “Whoever accepts one such a child—THIS CHILD—in my name, accepts me …”. (Mark 9:37) In short, “greatness” is defined as service to “the least of these” … which clearly begs what Martin Luther King claims is: “life’s persistent and most urgent question” which is, simply: “What are you doing for others?”

Perhaps this changing definition of “greatness” … or the “reward” for your faith and faithfulness … represents a significant shift in religious understanding. God’s “blessing” is to make YOU a blessing for the world. As one of my favorite hymns not to be included our hymnal tells it: “blessed to be a blessing, privileged to care. God’s “blessing” is to make YOU a blessing for the world not to materially reward you in this world and/or the next. But very sadly, a rapidly increasing number of American Christians don’t see it this way at all.

A recent TIME magazine cover story told about the burgeoning “Gospel of Wealth” in U.S. churches. In the gospel of wealth version of Christianity, God doesn’t want you to be poor … God wants to bless you with great material abundance. But certainly God doesn’t want ANYBODY to be poor, NO ONE! So why would God want you to be rich which might condemn someone else to be poor? Remember the teeter-totter … see-saw … in this inter-connected world, I defy someone to prove that the extreme, excessive wealth of the so-called first world nations is not directly related to the extreme excessive poverty of the so-called “developing nations”. Maybe not right at this instant … maybe not this crassly, but take the past 100 years … when the wealthy powerful nations of the world were establishing their claims to greatness, they were, in fact, dooming the rest of the world to servitude and suffering. While our star was ascending, the stars of other nations were descending. We’ve been globally interconnected as a world for longer than we think … it predates satellites and computer technology and cellular communication.

So maybe you have no burning aspirations for greatness … maybe you don’t “need no stinking gospel of wealth” … but Jesus says that you can, nonetheless be great by his—and by God’s standards. And it’s a “greatness” that matters greatly to our world … our world which God so loves.
I leave it to Martin Luther King to articulate that vision … the vision of a greatness that matters.
Standing in that same Atlanta bookstore, I not only heard parts of the “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, I also heard snatches of King’s sermon preached some two months earlier … two months before he was killed … where King referred to himself as a “drum major of justice”. In the sermon, he ponders aloud about his inevitable death … and what might be said at his passing:

Every now and then I guess we all think realistically (Yes, sir) about that day when we will be victimized with what is life's final common denominator—that something that we call death. We all think about it. And every now and then I think about my own death and I think about my own funeral. And I don't think of it in a morbid sense. And every now and then I ask myself, "What is it that I would want said?" And I leave the word to you this morning.
If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. (Yes) And every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize—that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards—that’s not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school. (Yes)
I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. (Yes)
I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.
I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. (Amen)
I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. (Yes)
And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. (Yes)
I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. (Lord)
I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. (Yes)
Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. (Amen) Say that I was a drum major for peace. (Yes) I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. (Yes) I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. (Amen) And that's all I want to say.
If I can help somebody as I pass along,
If I can cheer somebody with a word or song,
If I can show somebody he's traveling wrong,
Then my living will not be in vain.
If I can do my duty as a Christian ought,
If I can bring salvation to a world once wrought,
If I can spread the message as the master taught,
Then my living will not be in vain.
Yes, Jesus, I want to be on your right or your left side, (Yes) not for any selfish reason. I want to be on your right or your left side, not in terms of some political kingdom or ambition. But I just want to be there in love and in justice and in truth and in commitment to others, so that we can make of this old world a new world.

Amen … and … AMEN!

A sermon by Rev. Greg Ledbetter

We Are All Hungry

John 6:1-21

Many of you know that for the past couple weeks I have had the privilege of filling in at the church office while Lura has been on vacation. For the most part it has been a pretty quiet, uneventful time—just enough things to do and just enough people calling or stopping by to keep me from getting too lonely every day.

The first morning I started my substitute job, when I arrived I walked over into the courtyard and noticed that the little fountain out here was running for the first time since we started coming to Shell Ridge about two years ago. I was so delighted to hear the gentle sound of the running water, a sound that feels to me like an invitation to stop and rest a moment, to take notice of the world around me.

Knowing that the fountain gets overwhelmed with the leaves that fall from the Sycamore tree above it, I skimmed out whatever had fallen into the water, the leaves and some purple blossoms from the hasta plants beside it. After doing this, I placed my fingertips into the water where it burbles up at the top of the fountain, then I touched the water to my forehead and formed the shape of a cross there.

Coming from a family of long-time Baptists, this is a gesture my body is not familiar with—I can’t do it without feeling awkward, clumsy, or a bit like a liturgical impersonator. In the years when I was attending a Lutheran Seminary on the East Coast, I grew to envy my classmates who could so familiarly touch the water to their foreheads in an act of remembering their baptism (a baptism which most of them, of course, couldn’t in fact recall because they had been baptized as infants). To remember your baptism is very different from recalling the moment you were baptized. To remember your baptism is, in a very real sense, akin to the phrase that has sent many a child out of house in the morning: Remember Who You Are and Whose You Are. To remember your baptism is to remember you carry the name of Christ and that God has claimed you as God’s own. To remember your baptism is to remember that, no matter what, you are loved.

There was something about this fountain being in the courtyard of our Baptist church, something about my hand already being in water, combined with something inside me that longed to know in that moment God’s love for me, even for me, that made it seem possible for me to try on this gesture for myself—to touch the water to my forehead and remember my baptism.

It ended up that this was how I started each of my mornings these past couple weeks, carefully tending the fountain, then awkwardly touching the water to my head. Trying this new thing on for size.

****

This past Monday, a few minutes after I arrived in the church office, I received a phone call from our neighbor Betty who lives just up the road a bit. “I was just calling about the excitement at the church this morning,” she told me when I answered the phone.

“Excitement?” I asked cautiously, not wanting to commit to anything yet. “I haven’t heard about our excitement.”

“Oh! You haven’t heard!” she answered. “Well, a mountain lion was spotted in the church parking lot at about 6:30 this morning!”

After briefly considering investing in a couple of air horns to walk around with, I have to admit I found the news more exciting than frightening. Betty and I speculated together about what may have brought the mountain lion down into this fairly well-populated, certainly more-suburban-than-rural setting. Betty mentioned that the thermometer on her deck had registered 118 degrees the day before and she suggested, “I think the lion was looking for water.”

****

My thoughts immediately turned to the fountain in our courtyard, the delicious gurgle of water as it falls over itself. And I imagined the mountain lion hearing its sound, drawing cautiously through the terrible heat to its side, dipping his muzzle into the water and drinking deeply: The fountain of life.

We are a thirsty and a hungry people.

Our scripture this morning gives us Jesus feeding the multitudes and Jesus the Storm-Walker. The stories are fantastic—and stretch the limits of our imaginations, may even challenge some of our tolerance for what is possible in this work-a-day world. But “the miracle,” writes Tripp Hudgins, an American Baptist pastor in Chicago, is never the point of the ministry, [rather] the miracle points to God.” So we are invited to enter the story of this miracle with our eyes open to see the God revealed in it.

Jesus sits on the mountainside and sees that the thousands of people who had gathered there were hungry. He turns to Philip, and with a twinkle in his eye, asks him the pressing economic question of that day: “Where should we go to buy enough food for all these people?” Philip, clearly a practical man and a shrewd economist, answers Jesus very practically, one might even say prosaically: “Six months wages wouldn’t be enough to feel all these people!”

The economic system that shaped Philip’s imagination, though very different in time and place than our own, certainly seems very familiar to us. I remember years ago planning the reception for our wedding—everything eventually came down to calculating what the cost-per-head would be! Philip must have been doing his own figuring, as Jesus sat beside him, waiting for him to see beyond the hard, cold facts. Waiting for Philip to catch a glimpse of the kingdom of God.

It is Andrew who notices a boy with five barley loaves and two fish. It’s not much. It’s hardly worth noticing at all. Even so, he points the boy out to Jesus, almost with apology: “Of course, that’s not enough for everyone.”

But Jesus, delighted, instructs the disciples to have everyone sit down comfortably on the grass. The detail to have the people sit is an important one, because it has to do with social status. To have the people remain standing would be to treat them as a servant class, which many (if not all) of them most likely were. The difference between standing and sitting is much like the difference between a soup line and a dinner table. Jesus treats the people who had gathered with all the dignity they deserve, regardless of their social status.

With the bread and fish before him, Jesus gives thanks, (do you recognize the rhythm of communion in these words?), and he distributes the food to everyone. After everyone has had their fill, Jesus instructs the disciples to “gather all the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.”

****

“So that nothing may be lost.” The Greek word used here is the very same one used in the familiar passage from John 3:16—“For God so loved the world God gave God’s only begotten son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” The phrase that nothing may be lost is the same verb translated here as will not perish.

This is the God who is revealed to us in this miracle—a God who will not let anything or anyone be lost. We discover in this story of the feeding of the multitudes a prodigal God who provides for the physical needs of the people, like manna in the wilderness—and a God who will not rest until all the fragments are gathered, until every lost soul is gathered in.

On some level, the miracle is that with such a small amount, vast quantities of food were provided—enough for twelve baskets to be filled. But on another level, the miracle is this: that God’s love will not let us go: no matter what we face, what hunger we bring, what thirst we may suffer, no matter what we’ve done—God’s love will not let us go. So that nothing—and no one—may be lost.

Either way, the miracle points to Life. And this is God’s invitation to us, and to all the world. “I set before you life and death. Choose Life.” “I am the bread of Life,” says Jesus. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (6:35). “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came,” says Jesus, “that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (10:10).

****

It is important that we remember that Jesus gave the people real bread and actual fish out there on the mountainside. He did not merely pontificate or wax eloquently about spiritual nourishment for the hungry soul. Hungry people need to be fed real bread. But it is just as important for us to remember that fed people are hungry, too. We do not live by bread alone—we certainly do not live abundant life by bread alone. “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread?” asks the prophet Isaiah, “and you labor for that which does not satisfy? . . . Incline your ear, and come to me; listen so that you may live” (Is 55: 2,3).

The disciples were terrified when they saw Jesus walking toward them on the stormy, wind-tossed sea. But he said to them: “It is I; [or, in the Greek, “I AM”] Do not be afraid.”

To the Hebrew mind, the sea was a terrifying place—it was the site of chaos, the unfathomable, where the unknown threatened and overwhelmed. This is why the creation story begins with the Spirit hovering over the Deep—in Hebrew the word we translate “deep” is too-hoo-va-bo-hoo—it is a nonsense phrase meant to elicit the same gut feeling of dis-ease as the phrase helter skelter does for us today. When we hold in mind the tsunami that struck the Indonesian island of Java on July 17, we are reminded of the fear, damage and loss of life the sea can cause.

“I AM,” says Jesus—recalling the words that Moses heard out of the burning bush. I AM is the Liberating God who delivered the Hebrews from slavery. I AM will not rest until every fragment is gathered. I AM is liberating still. “Do not be afraid.” The invitation is to life, abundant life.

It is not a coincidence that we encounter these stories in the Gospel of John that focus on bread and water. The gospel was written late enough that the earliest Christians were already practicing baptism and communion. That Jesus give thanks over the bread and fish is meant to remind us of the last supper when Jesus gave thanks over the bread and wine. That Jesus walks on the stormy sea is meant to remind us of the waters of our baptism, when we took on the name of Christ.

Both stories confront us with the reality of death—when the people are hungry we can’t help but to think of the possibility of death by starvation or from utter lack of what we need, whether love, or shelter, or gentle words, or a safe home. When Jesus walks on the violent sea, we can’t help but think of death by drowning, or from being overwhelmed by things larger than us, whether the threat of downsizing, or fear of natural disasters, or the wave of dread with facing a new day, or the terror of war.

And yet the gift of abundant life is made all the more vivid in these direct confrontations. Not the least because Jesus Christ died the thirsty death. As the liturgical theologian Gordon Lathrop writes: "Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, is the bath that kills and makes alive, the hope for both the waters and the washed, the meal of God, the means for the nations to eat at Israel's table of salvation, the meal that says the truth about our death while transforming it into life" (Holy Things 101).

The fountain is right here. It calls to every thirsty soul. The meal is right here. We are a hungry and a thirsty people. Somehow the mountain lion heard the soft fall of water. It is a gentle sound. And it is a fierce love. It is the water that kills and makes alive.

Remember your baptism. When you were buried in the stormy seas of death’s chaos with Christ. Remember your baptism when you were lifted up to new life in Christ. Remember your baptism when you took the name of Christ for your own. Remember who you are—and whose you are. We are all beggers coming to the bread. We are all thirsty coming to the fountain of life.

Jennifer W. Davidson