Pulled This Way and That Way

Text: Matthew 6:24-34
Other texts: Psalm 131

The season of Lent is nearly upon us. Ash Wednesday is ten days away. On that day we are reminded of our humble origins in the dust of the earth, given life breathed into us by God. It is a day of humility that begins a season of humility.

Lent, like Advent, is a time reserved in the church year for soul-searching contemplation. It is a time to look hard at ourselves, at how things are going, at how we are doing. And it is a time to pray and think about how we would like things to be, how, maybe we would like things to be different. It is a time to get back in sync if we are out of sync, to be restored if we are bone-weary, to be quiet if we live in a cacophony. It is a time to be sane if things seem insane.

A longing to be at peace is an ancient longing. So there are disciplines, actions, that people perform during Lent that help them come to peace. Some of them—alms-giving, for example—have fallen into disuse. But “giving up” something for Lent remains. People give things up during Lent.

You might think of this as a chore. Or you might think of it as a great relief. An opportunity to lay down some of the burdens, obligations, and desires that you always carry with you. These burdens can be a distraction, making it impossible for us to think as clearly as the season of Lent asks us to. They are like little buzzing bugs that keep us from being mindful of ourselves and of God, keep us from loving those we love, from seeing the gifts and beauty in the world and in people around us.

We are invited by today’s readings to think about the things that rule us, that rule our lives. Perhaps you think that there are no such things. That you are not ruled by anything other than yourself. That you are the boss of you. Perhaps that is so for you. Perhaps you never feel the need for comforting by someone outside yourself. Perhaps you never look for direction outside of yourself. Perhaps you are self-assured; you never need reassuring.

Or perhaps instead you feel that you are small and the world is big, and that there are forces that draw you and push you—more or less—and that you are subject to them.

Last week Katie reminded us in her sermon that it is not our job to judge. We were invited to give up judging (and not just for Lent). It is God’s job. This week the Bible reminds us that it is not our job to provide for ourselves. It is God’s job. This seems harder. We can imagine that we can go without judging (though I doubt we can). It is harder to imagine that we can go without toiling and reaping.

Jesus in the Gospel is not suggesting that we do not need to eat and drink and be sheltered. God knows you need these things, Jesus says. These very things are the things God says we must provide for one another in the “goats and sheep” last judgment episode later in Matthew. We are animals; we need sustenance and security. But are we to let our striving for them rule us? And if not, what will? Which is the master, Jesus asks, that we serve?

Psalm 131 captures our deep longing for Home with a capital “H.” A place of total peace. Of safety. Of soft embrace. Like a child with its mother. Still, my soul, and make it quiet. Put aside pride, haughtiness, overwhelming matters, things too hard. Let my soul be still.

But in the psalm the child on its mother’s breast is not nursing, but is weaned, no longer totally dependent. It is not naive in the ways of the world. It is experienced. It has, we can imagine, come back to its mother after having been away on adventures, discovery, and struggles.

That’s what children do (it is built in; even monkeys do it). That’s what people do. We march out confident, curious, eager. Later, maybe frightened, maybe confused, maybe just tired, we hope to come back to a source of life for us. We need a base camp, a home base. An “all in free” safe spot. The place in which our souls can rest quietly.

But what if there are two such places? Competing places. Two masters, as Jesus calls them. Two mothers to which we might return. What then? Can there be two rocks on which our lives stand? Can there be two foundations? Can there be two mothers? In particular, can one of them be God and the other of them be money (and the stuff that money is good for)? Can we hang precariously balanced between the two, like between two poles of a magnet? No, Jesus says. You will hate one and love the other, Jesus says. They make different demands for the same you. They provide different comforts, different hopes, different guidance.

How will we know which to choose? For it seems that Jesus is giving us a choice to be made. We know in our brains, since we are faithful people, we should choose God. But in our hearts? What does our heart tell us?

Imagine you have two sweethearts vying for your affection and that you must choose only one. You ask yourself: to which are you more attracted? Or which would you rather please? To which do you turn when afraid? Or which are you most afraid of losing? What if the two are God and money?

Which is home to you, with a capital “H”?

If this were an easy question to answer, they wouldn’t be talking about it in the Bible like they do. If it were easy to trust in God instead of money, Jesus wouldn’t be telling us so energetically to choose God. He wouldn’t be making elaborate arguments about lilies and birds. He wouldn’t tell us as frequently as he does not to worry (the most frequently stated of all the commands of Jesus).

If this is a good time for soul-searching, as it might be for you, it is a good time to ask ourselves: what draws us most strongly? For you, which makes a better mother? If this is a time to get back in sync and to restore our weary bones, which master best shows us the way?

Which has brought you life and sanity? Which has brought you comfort? Which has been more reliable? Which stills your soul and brings you peace? Which, when you go there, feels like you are home?

Open Hands

Text: Matthew 5:38-48

Preacher: Katie Wilson, vicar at Faith.

Thank you all for having me here. Thank you All for being here.

Today I would like to speak about equality, and inclusivity, and what those words mean to me in light of our gospel reading: to “give to everyone” and to “Love your enemies.”

I have preached before about the work we do in Faith Kitchen, providing hot meals and a shared community, and the way that the doors of Faith Lutheran are “metaphorically thrown wide open, and all are welcome.” In a way, on these meal nights, we are trying to put into practice the words of the Gospel, the words we have read today in Matthew: “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow.”

Give to Everyone. Do not refuse Anyone. This is a Big task that we have at hand.

When we make the statement at Faith Kitchen, or in worship at Faith Lutheran, that All are Welcome, we are aligning ourselves with this same sense of radical equality that Jesus exhorts us to in the gospel. We will not refuse anyone. Every Sunday, you will find printed in your bulletin these words: “All are welcome. Christ invites all to share in his holy supper. None will be turned away from God’s table.” These words, printed again and again, do more than communicate to a new visitor the inclusivity that Faith offers. While some might gloss these words over or simply expect them and take them for granted, for others—those who have been marginalized or turned away in the past—those words “All are Welcome” might be the hinge on which their whole world swings. Yet these words do more than inform the new comers, these words, if we let them, can inform us again and again of our commitment to equality.

I have been reflecting, though, on this notion of “equality;” on what assumptions we carry along when engaging it as a concept, and on how far we are willing to extend it to others. It is easy enough to say that All are Welcome. Or to say that every human being on earth deserves equal rights, human rights, equal treatment, God’s love. I think it is even easy enough to believe in this wholeheartedly.

My question, then, is about the specifics of putting it into practice: day by day, minute by minute, and keeping it in practice even when facing people who do not make it easy, even when facing people that make it very, very hard. When we say or believe that everyone deserves equality and that everyone is included in the spectrum of the Gospel’s commandment to give and to love, then that means we must maintain that commitment throughout the myriad challenges of our lives. It means that we must include the disruptive and threatening guests in our picture of who is welcome at our table. It means, on a communal and global level, that we must include even the people that make it excruciatingly Hard to do this practice: because total inclusivity includes the violent, and the cruel, it includes the worst things we can imagine inhabiting our world.

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous”

Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you. This means to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute others, who wound others, this means to pray for the ones who make hate and fear boil up in your throat like black tar. Pray for them, and meanwhile, ask yourself if they are Welcome. Are they included in your vision of God’s table? Do they have the equal right to God’s love?

We are running up now against the edge of “equality” that’s been troubling me. When we say “All are Welcome” it is not just an invitation to others. It is not a performative act with lines of small print hidden at the bottom saying “All are Welcome—unless you are angry, mean, scary, hateful, hurtful, of this race or that sex, wearing an atrocious coat, or too noisy when everyone else is quiet.” When we contemplate deeply the notion of equality, or the statement “All are Welcome,” it is a challenge to ourselves to examine our innermost landscapes, our own most subtle aversions, our deepest beliefs. It can be a call to put these beliefs into action, to practice what we think we believe.

Because—obviously—it is extremely difficult to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” It is entirely appropriate that as we ponder these words and contemplate this type of complete inclusivity, that we ask ask of ourselves: How? How do I practice this, how could I refuse no one, how would I love and pray for someone who persecutes, who hurts my family? This is a never ending question and I do not propose to answer it definitively. In contemplating it, I recalled a poem I have long loved that doesn’t answer this question either—but it helps to keep me asking. It was written by the 16th century Spanish Carmelite Nun, Teresa of Avila:

Teresa of Avila (1515–1582)

Christ Has No Body

Christ has no body but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

Compassion on this world,

Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,

Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,

Yours are the eyes, you are his body.

Christ has no body now but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

compassion on this world.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

There are many venues in which we can practice letting our hands become the hands of Christ. Giving to those who beg from us, turning the left cheek if someone strikes the right, offering our cloak to one who takes our coat—these are actions that keep Christ’s actions alive in our world. And we can practice such awareness while serving meals, sweeping floors, while watching the violent news of war and protest in distant lands and close to home, while bearing the burden of our own deepest wounds, fears, and concerns. We have been told that the sun rises on the evil and on the good; the rain falls on the righteous and unrighteous alike. It is not that there is no difference between evil and good: just that We are not the ones to judge it. That is not our work. That is not our job. And speaking for myself—the realization that I cannot judge another comes as a huge relief. My work, then, is to welcome, to include, from my highest theory to my smallest moments; in the times it is easy and the times it is very, very hard.

It is helpful for me to remember this poem in moments when my hands are struggling to give, when there is a shadow over the ability of my eyes to shine compassion on the world. I remember that Christ has no hands to do this work, but mine; but then I catch myself, and remember that it’s not about my hands, my body, “mine.”

What I want to say is that Christ has no body now but OURS.

So not only can I allow myself to see my hands as the hands of Christ, I can re-affirm my commitment to equality, and inclusivity, every time I see your hands and your feet as the hands and feet that Christ has to work with now. We do this any time we look into the eyes of a stranger and know that somehow Christ is looking back at us, shining compassion on the world.

To be egalitarian and radically inclusive is not about me deciding that I am kind and good and educated enough to accept the equality of everyone around me. It is about acknowledging that everyone around me is Already Inherently Included in God’s love. Just as it is not my job to make the sun shine or the rain fall, I have no ability to determine who is good or evil, righteous or unrighteous. Where would I draw that line? Equality and inclusivity is about deciding that I have no right to judge who is, or who isn’t, who might be or who might not be, doing Christ’s work in the world.

We are all flawed as humans, we are complicated and moody and we frequently fall far short of our highest ideals and goals. The point is that we are In Process, we are moving towards the self that we would like to be. When we move towards the inclusivity, the compassion of our own heart and when we shine that back to others, we move towards “God.” It is not alone that we do this, but with a community: our community is what reflects God to us, what shows us that Christ is moving through our own flawed and tired hands.

And Here—right here—is just such an opportunity.

Every Sunday, as part of the service, we greet each other in fellowship; we look into each other’s eyes, take each other’s hands and with all the presence and the sincerity we can muster, we wish each other Peace, Peace be with you. You may not know every person whose hand you have taken or whose eyes you have looked into. You may, in fact, three days from now be stuck behind them in line at the grocery store as they slowly unload 12 items in the 10 item express lane; you might be cut off in traffic by them later this afternoon. But you have looked into their eyes in presence, you have wished them well. You have transformed them, and they, in turn, transformed you. These are the eyes of Christ that Teresa of Avila refers to: your own eyes.

Perhaps it feels like a big leap from transforming the frustration we feel in traffic to my attempt at a theological inclusion of those who wreck violence into our vision of who is welcome at God’s table. But I believe that the seed is the same and that it is important to make the connection between them: to reflect on equality not as an distant status but as an intimate and constant process, to acknowledge the unending and difficult inner work that a commitment to inclusivity asks of us, to honor our not-knowing and our inability to judge or draw the deciding line between good and evil, even as we strive to see ourselves, and everyone we meet, as the hands and eyes and body of Christ working compassion on the world.

So if I ask Who am I to judge? Who are we to judge? Then of course I also have to ask of myself “who am I to preach this to any of you?” I have no connection that you do not have. I have no purchase on this text, or on these words, which is not also right here, waiting, and available to you. This is an invitation to practice the words of the Gospel, to participate in Teresa of Avila’s poem. We are all invited, we are all essential; we are all included.

Getting in the Way of Life

Text: Deuteronomy 30:15-20

I set before you life and death, says Moses, blessings and curses. Choose life.

I should carry those words of Moses on a card in my wallet. I should have them as my screen saver. I should tattoo them on my arm. At some of the most important decisions of my life, these words have been a guide, a prod, a test of motivation and validity. They are like the room with two doors. Which door to take? Which way is life, life-giving, listens to life calling? Which way is death, life-draining, listens to fear?

These words were not written to be used like that. They were not proclaimed by Moses so that I could make better personal decisions. They were made for bigger things. They were made for Israel. They were an exhortation disguised as an option. Moses stood before all the Israelites, freed from Egypt, having been given the gift of law, chosen by God, promised land. Moses speaks to them. This speech is his last will and testament. It is a summary of all that his life has been and all that Israel has seen. Now the people are on the threshold of a new land. Moses is near his death. He will not see the land that God has sworn to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

I have led you by God’s will out of slavery, Moses tells them. I have given you the law from God, he says. I have brought you with God’s guidance to this land. Before you now you may go this way or that. The doors are clearly marked. There is no guessing. This way is the way of God, doing what God commands, keeping God your God. This way is the way of life. Land, prosperity. That way is turning your back on God, choosing others. That way is the way of death. Wandering, adversity. Choose one, Moses says. No, he corrects himself. Choose this one! Choose life!

So on they go, into the land, choosing to follow the commandments, to be God’s people. But like the book of Deuteronomy itself, the future is open ended. There is not one choice made once and for all. The story of the rest of the Bible is the story of a people who betray and abandon God over and over, choosing death as often as life. And then being—thank God—reconciled, restored, redeemed—forgiven—over and over.

Set before each of us is the same choice set before all Israel. Choose life. And in the end the buck stops here. It stops with each of us. And so the grand choice of Israel turns out to be implemented over the centuries in the humble and routine choices of you and me. Maybe we need those cards and screen savers to remind us of what we are doing.

These bigs words of Moses—life and death—have appeared in the lives of many, including mine, in smaller words. Is what I’m about to do generous or greedy? Am I acting out of love or out of fear? Is it brave or cowardly? For me only or for others? Is it moving forward or retreating? Is it playful or grim?

But perhaps I am misleading you into thinking that this passage in Deuteronomy is mostly about choosing things. Though the effect comes down to that. This passage is a warning. The warning is this: There are things that are deadly. God is not. You’ll stick with God, if you know what’s good for you.

Rather than list a whole bunch of deadly things, I want to mention two things in particular today. I want to talk about worry and about regret. I want to do that because it seems to me that it is possible that worry and regret squeeze God right out of our lives, and in the end there is no life left to choose.

Worry is an attempt to control the future. When we awake at 4:30 in the morning—or whatever that time is for you—when we awake before the sun is up, it’s because we are trying to figure out how to make things work that might not. We imagine conversations and how they might go our way. We imagine tactics that can foil our detractors. We imagine ways to protect things that are ours. We imagine scary scenarios and wonder how we might prevent them.

Regret is an attempt to control the past. We think as if we could relive that shameful event, or undo the hurt, or to seize the opportunity. To say the words or to unsay them. We imagine that those conversations did go differently, we imagine that those scary scenarios we did prevent.

Worry and regret are the same thing. We know that to be so because they make us feel the same way. Helpless. Powerless. Anxious. In our hearts and insides, our guts. They lead our thoughts into little unfulfilling circles.

We cannot control the past and we cannot control the future. We can remember the past. And we do hope for and plan for the future. But in the end, the past and the future are not in our hands. We need to let them go.

We are taught by our faith to trust God. What good is worry? the Bible asks us. Consider the lilies of the field, it suggests. Give away all that you have, Jesus tells us. Do not set up treasures for yourself on earth. Expect the unexpected. Worry fights trust.

We are taught by our faith that God forgives us our sins. God frees us from our shameful past, the hurts we have caused, the good left undone. We are promised forgiveness for all our misdeeds. Regret fights forgiveness.

In our worry, we shove God out of the future. In our regret, we shove God out of the past. We squeeze God out of all the hours of our lives. All we are left with is ourselves.

In choosing life we choose, Moses says, to listen to God. To not hear is to choose death. Worry and regret are too noisy in our brains. They make us deaf to God’s voice. You do not hear, Moses says. God seems silent to us. If to choose if is to walk with God, as the Bible says, how will we know what is life and what is death if our own anxious voices drown out God’s.

Quiet those anxious voices. Stop a moment. Listen for God who forgives your past and steps with you into the future. Choose life.

A Practical Guide to Happiness

Text: Psalm 112
Other texts: Isaiah 58:1-12

A couple of weeks ago social observer David Brooks wrote about happiness. Happiness has been in the news a lot these days. It is trendy to talk about happiness. This is new. Though happiness may have been a goal for people, it was not considered polite to talk about it. Maybe people thought that happiness was not a worthy pursuit. Too self-centered sounding, maybe. Or maybe happiness was supposed to be a side effect of something else: accomplishment, say, or wealth, or a good marriage.

But it turns out that people are not very happy and they are not very happy about not being happy. They are supposed to be happy, but they are not. What’s up with that? It is disappointing. And we do like to talk about what’s disappointing.

Another thing: times are tough. But we have lost the sense that if times were better we’d be happier. Being better off has not made us happy. Our values have betrayed us. We do like to talk about betrayal, too.

Brooks writes about this. He says, “many Americans have a vague sense that their lives have been distorted by a giant cultural bias. They live in a society that prized the development of career skills but is inarticulate when it comes to things that matter most. … When it comes to their most important decisions—whom to marry and whom to befriend, what to love and what to despise—they are on their own.” And he says they don’t know to whom to turn.

But help is on the way from science, who is now willing to talk about happiness. “Brain science,” he says, “helps fill the hole left by the atrophy of theology and philosophy.”

I love brain science. And Brooks’s article is wonderful and funny and insightful. But I think he should read Psalm 112. Whose subject is how to be happy. A lot of the Bible is about happiness, which is, as I said last week, another word for blessed. We are suppose to be happy. And the Bible is not quiet about how to live a happy life. And it is not vague.

There are two sorts of ways the Bible talks about happiness. One is the crabby way. “If you don’t do things this way, you’ll be sorry.” You will not be happy, you’ll feel estranged from God, bad things will happen, you’ll be confused and feel empty. There is a little bit of that in today’s first reading from Isaiah. (And the prophets seem to like this mode in general). You, Isaiah tells his audience, are greedy, quarreling hypocrites. No wonder things are not working out. No wonder you are not happy.

The other way the Bible talks about happiness I’ll call the Praise the Lord! way. That’s the way of today’s psalm. “Praise the Lord!” is how it starts. And then it goes on to tell everyone how to be happy. The source of happiness is God. And the way to be happy is to do what God says. This should not be surprising if we think, as it says in Genesis, that God was pleased with creation and called it good. Implicit in this is that God knows what is good for us, that God hopes that we will be happy, and that God is unhappy when we are. If we think that God is happy when we are miserable and takes pleasure in our suffering, we probably are thinking of the wrong god.

The psalm is divided into three parts. But before I talk about them, you should know that this particular psalm, Psalm 112, like nine other psalms, is an acrostic. That means each line begins—in Hebrew—with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. You can get the idea in English in this translation:

Alleluia! (A, right?)

Blessed (this line begins with “B”) are those who live in deep awe of God.

Con-tentment and delight in God’s commandments are theirs, and their

De-scendants will be mighty in the land.

And so forth. You get the idea.

Acrostic forms are good ways to remember things. They are a mnemonic, a memory aid. That this psalm is an acrostic means two things. It means first that the ideas in the psalm were important enough that people were expected to learn them. And it means second that everyone in the community shared these same words, word for word. In that sense it is like a prayer we all know—like the Lord’s prayer—or like the blessing after worship, or a well-known hymn.

The psalm has three parts: 1. Blessings for you. 2. Blessings for others. 3. How to live. And also an appendix: too bad for the wicked. (The lectionary suggests we might leave out that appendix, but I don’t think we can do that). All of this is in the context of the first line: God knows how you can be happy; pay attention to what God says.

Here are the ways you will be blessed if you do that. Your family will be strong and you children will be delightful. You will be surrounded by good things. You will find yourself close to God and will never be abandoned. Your life will feel firm under your feet, it will feel solid.

Here are the ways others will be blessed. You will be a light for others, who will be led by your example to be happy themselves. They will be the recipients of your generosity, and they will know they can trust you to be just and fair. They will know you to be honorable.

Here is what you need to do. You need to be generous. You need to be just. You need to give to those who need it. And to care for others and be compassionate. You need to not listen to gossip and slander. You need to be brave.

Here is what the wicked (or the foolish, another way of putting it) will do. They will be angry and upset. Partly that’s because you will be happy and they won’t. And mostly that’s because you’ll be doing things that God says will make you happy, while they will be trying to figure out how to be happy without doing those things. And it won’t work.

That is what the passage in Isaiah is really about. About people trying to live in ways that are not generous, compassionate, and so forth. Trying to fool God, really, or fool the nature of the world. To think that thinking about yourself first is the way to be happy. Then discovering that the world does not work that way.

Why aren’t we happy, the people ask? Because you are fighting me, God says, fighting the way things work. Because in particular you are trying to avoid sharing your bread with the hungry, housing the homeless, protecting the vulnerable. But if you do, Isaiah says, your light will rise in the darkness and your gloom will be dispelled. God will guide you, and satisfy your needs, and make you strong. You shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never fail. You will be happy.

Matthew in his Gospel speaks of the law and prophets and the kingdom of heaven. This is the psalm all over again, but different language. Those who attend to the teaching of the law and the prophets are those who take delight in God’s commandments. The kingdom of heaven is by definition a place of profound happiness. Those who do as God instructs, who take delight in God’s commandments, have the greatest happiness. Those who do not will be the least happy.

If the Bible is a user’s manual—as I suggested last week—then it is pretty clear about this. The things that the world teaches us to do to be happy turn out to be bogus. They make promises, but they are liars. David Brooks and Isaiah and Matthew agree. Even brain science agrees. If it is happiness that you want, being generous, brave, and obedient to God works better than anything else.

Praise the Lord!