Pentecost 22 B

The Wound is Where the Light Enters

Introduction

Rumi, the mystical Muslim poet once wrote that, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” 

John O Donohue, an Irish priest and poet says it this way, “The beauty that emerges from woundedness is a beauty infused with feeling; a beauty different from the beauty of landscape and the cold perfect form. This is a beauty that has suffered its way through the ache of desolation until the words or music emerged to equal the hunger and desperation at its heart. It must also be said that not all woundedness succeeds in finding its way through to beauty of form. Most woundedness remains hidden, lost inside forgotten silence. Indeed, in every life there is some wound that continues to weep secretly, even after years of attempted healing. Where woundedness can be refined into beauty a wonderful transfiguration takes place.”

We have a sense of that, do we not, that brokenness can lead to strength? That being pushed down one too many times can inspire us to rise up in power. That when we have a sense of loss, or a sense of pain, or have been hurt ; that becomes a place where God can enter into our lives and change things.

Another famous way to look at this was the rich man who came to Jesus and said, “What do I have to do to inherit eternal life? What should I do to be right with God?”

And Jesus asked him what he had done already; and in truth, lots… he went to church, he gave to charity, he followed the religious and political laws… but what else was there?

“Go, and sell all you have, and follow me,” Jesus says simply.

But he cannot. He cannot give up the things that make him strong, and powerful, and capable. And Jesus is saying that if we want to be closer to God than we already are, we need to let go of those things and become weak, become like children, become vulnerable and broken… it is then that we will make room for God.

With The Kids

House of Cards

Have you ever found it really hard to do something and been really frustrated?

There was once this blind man who was in a whole crowd of people, and he wanted to see Jesus… but the crowd would not move… and besides, he was blind… but he kept trying, kept calling out to Jesus, kept asking the people in the crowd to move…. Eventually Jesus heard him, and the crowd helped him, and Jesus healed him so he could see.

It is like the little engine that could… ever hear that story… When we are frustrated with something, when we feel like we can’t do something… we have to keep trying. People will help us, God will help us.

Things Can Only Get Better

Do you know how many songs, movies, and stories revolve around the idea that things can only get better? 

People find true love, people become rich because of their hard work, and relationships are restored. In some of them the prince comes swooping in and rescues the princess. In other’s people find out who they really are and live happily ever after….

Do you know why so many stories and songs are about this? Because it is, for the most part, a fantasy!

I am pretty sure that someone was unhappy with the way Job originally ended and tacked on the part about Job getting everything back, and getting back more than he started with…. Because that is how we wished the story ended… that is how we hope all of our stories end… we hope the bullies in high school get caught. 

We hope the person who cheats us out of something gets cheated themselves. We hope that we find the perfect guy or girl to make us happy for the rest of our lives. We hope all our hard work pays off…. You get the picture….

And I want you to know there is nothing wrong with that… I hope it all works out for everyone… I really do. But I also think that there are a lot of hiccups along the way for almost everyone. I think that there is pain, and heartache and loss… but the thing is… There has to be a balance, right, and the thing is, you are the one who decides which one influences your life…

Pain can break you. Pain can make you retreat into yourself and never try again… or pain can make you want to try harder. After all, things that are worth something are worth a little sacrifice, right?

I would have much rather the story of our friend Job ended with God coming and telling him, you don’t understand everything, and Job saying, “you know what, you are right.”

Cause that is the life we all lead. We do not get easy answers and fortunes are rarely restored… but that does not mean that the events of our lives do not teach us, do not leave us stronger, do not leave us in a better place to see the world for what it is… and to be more open to God’s grace in the midst of it.

Take Heart in the Struggle

William Sloane Coffin is one of this generation’s best, and most famous preachers. Amongst other things he has been chaplain at Harvard University, and head pastor at one of the largest churches in America, Riverside Baptist in New York.

Some time ago now Coffin’s 24 year old son died in a tragic car accident. He plunged off a bridge and into Boston Harbour during a storm.

One week later Coffin himself preached at Alex’s funeral. His sermon has become one of the most famous funeral sermons of all time. In the middle of it, talking about how most people who come to his house delivering food talk about it having to have been “the will of God” he says,

“God doesn't go around this world with his finger on triggers, his fist around knives, his hands on steering wheels. God is death set against all unnatural deaths…. The one thing that should never be said when someone dies is, “It is the will of God.” Never do we know enough to say that. My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die; that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.”

I remember when I was just a wee minister… starting out in Quebec at 24 years old. No one in my family had ever died… and the first funeral I had was a girl my own age… she died of brain cancer. I did a really good funeral, everyone was moved by it. And we went on. I did not know what the parents were really feeling at all, I had never been there.

The next year my best friend in Seminary died of a heart attack. More friends, a few grandparents, some failed relationships, and I started to be able to “feel” what other people were feeling. I could empathize, and I could begin to better understand sentiments like William Sloane Coffin’s I could see how God would feel heartbroken at the loss of a single person….

I think this is the beauty that poets talked about… the way that light comes through pain…

Which by the way, is also part of what made Jesus so incredible… he felt what other’s felt; he empathized with those around him to such a degree that they trusted him, they followed him, and they needed him.

“Take heart,” the crowd says to the blind man, “the Master is calling you…”

We all want to hear that, do we not? We all want to be understood, to be loved into life, to be healed….

Conclusion

It is our humanness… the fact that our lives are imperfect…  our pain… that makes us the people we are.

It might not be the best news you have heard all week. But how about thinking of it this way… it is that brokenness that allows us to love the way we do. It is our empathy that allows us to be the most like God. 

When we accept those broken parts of us as who we are, we become stronger than we ever imagined.

Not only that, but when we realize we are not perfect, that is when God can come into our hearts and give us strength. And that, my friends, is very good news.

Pentecost 22 -A 2011

A Brand New Day

Introduction

As Children of the day we are called to walk in the light, trusting God and supporting one another. There are moments when we feel like our lives are being destroyed, as if a thief came in the middle of the night and stole it away from us.

You have all been there – an unexpected death, a layoff from a job that you were not expecting, a sudden diagnosis of illness…

There are moments of despair, difficult devastating issues and circumstances arise that knock the wind out of us.

We all of a sudden realize we are living a dead end job, or we remember some half-forgotten moment of trauma from our childhood…

And the thing is, we can choose to respond in one of two ways, as children of the day or children of the night…

These are Paul’s words not mine, but in the end, it is about recognizing the light and hope and possibility, trusting that we will get strength from the divine.

Today we are going to hear some passages from the Bible that on the surface seem pretty harsh – but as we explore them deeper, you can see that the good news for us is about recognizing how God is already active in our lives.

Flashlight People (with kids)

Ever used a flashlight? Why? What do they help us to do?

-         Have you ever been lost? Ever been afraid in the dark?

-          Didn’t know what to do

-         A long, long time ago there was group of people who felt lost… and they were afraid and there was this big bully being mean to them... They went and talked to this wise woman, named Deborah.

-          She was a leader of all the people around – and she helped them to find their way.

-          She sent someone, like her Big Brother, who was he and strong, to talk some sense into the bully…

-          Sometimes in our lives there are people like Deborah – people who help us to see the right thing to do, or where we need to go… I like to call them Flashlight People… cause they are just like a flashlight, a light in the dark…

The Light of Day

Do you remember the story of the Chilean miners? I remember thinking when I heard how long it was going to take to dig down to them, that they would certainly be dead by the time they got there… how long was it… like 2 months trapped underground, trapped in the dark… If they had not died they would surely have gone insane… right? Imagine spending that time alone with just a few people, not able to move very far, never knowing just what was going to happen next… wondering if the rest of the mine was going to collapse and kill you.

But they made a choice. They chose to live. One of them jogged the narrow, darkened mine passages, one prayed, others thought of family to give them strength…. They could easily have chosen the other way, despair, darkness, death.

It may sound harsh, but Paul says to this bunch of Christians, in a brand new church, facing oppression from both sides, that they have that simple choice to make…

You don’t know what will happen next, none of us ever do, death waits like a thief in the night, there are going to be a lot of hurdles to overcome, but we should live in hope… we should always act in a way that brings strength not only to us, but to those around us.

Ever tried to actively make people happy around you? Smile at people you walk by, tell a joke really loud on a bus full of unhappy looking people? Compliment a person who is on their feet for their eighth hour behind the cash register… what happens? Everything changes… Not only for them, but for you…

Living in the light is not denying that life is hard, it is a choice. It is waking up and saying, a lot can happen in a day…

 Ostriches and other Cowards

I saw a movie last night, “In Time” it was a really interesting movie, sort of science fiction like, about a time in the future when everybody is given 25 years to live – and there is a clock on your arm, like a watch, ticking down the days, hours, minutes and seconds until the end.

Life, in this world, becomes currency. You can trade minutes for a cup of coffee, hours for a night in a hotel, years for a brand new car.

What the movie pointed out is the huge divide between the rich and the poor. For us, not being able to pay our bills means a lot of stress and a lot of hardship – but for the people in this story, debt means death.

The rich in this world had hundreds, perhaps thousands of years on their arms. No one aged after 25 anyway, so you could technically live forever – unless you fell down a flight of stairs, or ate some bad chicken, or drowned… or died of any of what we might call “accidental” causes.

So no one drove, no one swam; no one took any risks of any type, for fear of losing their immortality.

In other words, fear kept them from living life.

Jesus parable is terribly harsh. It is not fair by any stretch of the imagination. We feel sorry for the slave who does what he thinks is the safe thing, and buries his money.

But what if Jesus is really talking about being afraid? What if he is saying that if we choose to live without taking those risks, stepping out, or living the day fully as God intends, we risk losing everything; what if we are therefore choosing to live in the darkness.

Fear closes the door tightly on God’s love, you can’t feel it, you can’t let it in, you can’t see what is possible; all hope disappears.

And fear is something we all deal with. It can be subtle, like the fear of saying the wrong thing that stops us from talking to people. Or it can be extreme, like the fear of disappointing parents that causes us to choose to be a doctor even though we hate everything about it.

It comes in all shapes and sizes, like the fear that no one loves us that causes us to be a bully or the fear of being different that causes us to dress like everyone else.

Over and over Jesus said he came that we might have life, abundant life, hope filled life… do you think you can have that if you are crippled by fear?

It is a daily choice. Perhaps it is a daily struggle, but we are given the talents, the moments of our lives, and asked what are we going to do with them – so are you going to bury them and play it safe, or risk it abundantly and live in hope?

Conclusion

When was the last time you stopped to watch the sun rise?

I actually managed to do that the morning of the Pancake breakfast. It is a lot easier in the winter… but to see the pinks, then orange, blossom across the sky into light, into the pale blue dawn is kind of magical….

Sunrises are one of those experiences of nature that can move people to tears, we stand in awe as if God is standing in front of our very eyes.

But, it is not a very special event, it is not a once in a lifetime thing, we could watch it every single day of our lives…

So why do we find it so captivating and emotional? Perhaps it is because it is the beginning of a brand new day… a day filled with possibilities and hope, with new beginnings and new light.