Pain and the Power of God

This past Wednesday, I had an incredible experience. I got to spend the morning with Scott Brown, an art historian and professor at UNF who is teaching the Bible Challenge with me.  Scott took me to an exhibit at the Cummer Museum on The Mother of Sorrows, featuring artwork from the 14th and 15th centuries. This artwork depicts Christ hanging on the cross or dead and his mother, often holding him or weeping.  These are such incredible depictions of suffering as I have ever seen.  Scott and I are to speak on a panel regarding this exhibit in early February.

For hundreds of years, people have gazed upon the pain of Mary and Jesus and seen an image of God. They have seen God in pain.

In the Old Testament, we have come to the prophet Elijah.  One of the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, Elijah fed the hungry and even raised a dead boy to life.  He was anointed by God, chosen to be a prophet, and yet his life was lonely and often painful. At one point, Elijah sits down under a tree and begs God to just let him die. Being chosen by God did not mean that his life was easy.

In the passage that we see today, Elijah knows that he is about to die and he shares this fact with his disciple, Elisha.  Elijah asks Elisha if there is anything that he can give him before he goes to God and Elisha asks for "a double share of your Spirit." Elijah lets his disciple know that if he is able to see his master go to God, ie watch him die, then he will receive that Spirit. If Elisha is included in that most intimate of moments, then it will mean that forever after, he will hold some of his master in his heart.

Soon afterwards, Elijah does die but not in our normal way.  His body is literally carried up to heaven and his disciple Elisha gets to see it all.  Elisha cries out in surprise and pain as he watches his master die, but he is blessed with a double share of Elijah's spirit as a result of being present with him when he died.

Often when a person dies, their relatives want to be there when they take their last breath.  I will explain that this is hard to orchestrate. Introverts will often wait until they are alone to die. But even I have to admit that actually being present with a person when they take their last breath is something special, something sacred happens.  It is a moment of incredible intimacy, of grief and pain. God seems to be especially present at the moment when a person dies.

When John the Baptist saw Jesus coming, he said, "Behold the Lamb of God!"  A lamb was a helpless animal that would have been killed on or in front of the altar in the temple.  A sacrificial lamb was slaughtered in order to gain God's favor. Somehow the suffering and death of the lamb made things right with God. John saw Jesus as a lamb, someone who would be slaughtered. He foresaw that Jesus would suffer and die.

Human beings want to avoid pain.  Of course we do, pain hurts. We dont want to hurt and we dont want to admit to others that we are hurting.  But God feels differently about pain.  For God, pain is an opportunity to grow closer.  It is a chance to hold onto God, a chance to inherit a piece of the Spirit.

All of you who go to the beach know what it is like to swim in the waves. In his book Open Secrets, the author tells the story of Rabbi Akiva, who was once lost in a shipwreck at sea.  He alone survived, and when people wanted to know how he did it, he explained it quite simply. "Whenever a wave arose, I bent into it."  This is how we are to approach suffering and even dying, by bending into it and allowing it to wash over us rather than letting it sweep us away.

I think of Elisha, watching the person that he loved most in the world be taken away from him, crying out and yet bending into the wave of sorrow that came.  And then emerging with part of his master inside of him, emerging a better man.

Jesus let us see his dying, you know.  He included you and me into the most intimate and painful moments of his life. Not only did he allow the world to see his death but he allows us to paint about it and write about it and create beautiful art exhibits about it.  The Lamb of God let himself be slaughtered right in front of us and for thousands of years we have been picturing and imagining what he went through. We meditate on the cross.  We bend into the wave of his suffering and in doing so, we inherit a glimpse of his spirit.

We remember Dr. Martin Luther King tomorrow.  He too died for all the world to see and when he died, we inherited a piece of his spirit. This country was changed forever by his death and his dream of justice lives on in our hearts, because he died for all of us.

Whenever you have the courage to let another person see not just your dying but simply your pain, you invite them to share with you in your spirit.  You give that person a gift, a glimpse of Christ in you.

We try so hard to act as if we are always happy and prosperous. We pretend to have it all together.  But you do not experience Church if you only tell each other the superficial parts of your life and pretend to never suffer.  Tell each other the truth.  Let someone inside your world.  Share your pain. And bend into the wave, not holding onto it and not fighting it but facing it, moving through it, and you will emerge stronger than before.

I wish we all led perfect lives, lives free of pain or suffering.  But then I walk into an exhibit like the one at the Cummer and I see the beauty of the cross and I begin to understand that life would not be so holy and we would not grow so much if we all sat happily together.  It is the moments of hardship that shape us, so long as we understand how to bend into the wave of pain and not let it consume us.  Tell the truth about your life, share your pain with the ones you love. And remember that by speaking of your pain you are neither giving in nor wallowing in it.  Rather you are bending into the wave and letting it wash over you.  Remember that the waves do pass, calm does come and there is light at the end of the tunnel, resurrection on the other side of the tomb.  The Lamb of God did not suffer forever.  And neither will you.

The Music of your Baptism

King George VI of England had a terrible studder.  All of you who have seen the movie The Kings Speech know the pain of watching someone studder. It is agonizing.  All you want to do is to say their words for them.  Poor George, or Bertie as he was called by his loved ones, had to make public speeches and even before his coronation, this was agony for him.

You see, the more that a person struggles with a stutter, the worse the stutter becomes.  A person can become literally tongue-tied and unable to speak at all, as if all sound is just blocked from coming out their mouth.  They become paralyzed with fear, anger and disgust at their own inability to utter the simplest of phrases. One of my cousins had such a stutter growing up.  It was so painful.

Bertie has almost given up hope that his life will be anything more than just pure public pain and embarrassment when he comes to a speech therapist named Lyle Logue. Logue has trouble even keeping Bertie in the room, for he is tired of trying and wants to give up on speech therapy entirely.  As a last resort, Lyle does an experiment with Bertie.  He puts earphones on his client and plays a symphony loudly in Bertie's ears.  As the same time as the music is playing, Lyle asks Bertie to read the To Be or Not To Be Speech from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Bertie cannot hear himself at all. He assumes that he studders as usual.  He yanks off the earphones after only a few moments of reading and storms out of Lyle's office.  Only months later does he get a chance to listen to the recording that was made and to realize that he read Shakespeare flawlessly for the first time in his life.  He read flawlessly because he was listening to the music and not to his own mind.

King David did not have a stutter but he had other problems.  He had united all Israel under his reign.  He had defeated Goliath the giant and all their enemies.  He was loved and popular and everyone thought he was the best King that Israel had ever had (which isnt saying so much since they had only had one other King and his name was Saul and he went insane). David had it all and then he got comfortable and started believing that he deserved it all and he took a woman as if she were his wife when she was married to someone else. And when she got pregnant, he tried to bring her husband home but her husband would not lie with her.  So David had the woman's husband killed. Adultery turned to murder. And this was a King who had more wives than anyone alive.  But he wanted the one person he could not have. 

David began to stumble in his life from this point on. He could not discipline his children.  They warred with one another. David became paralyzed in his life. In the reading that we heard from II Samuel, one of David's sons violates his half-sister, David's daughter, and yet David will not punish his son.  His boys end up killing each other.  It is as if his whole life, which was once a glorious song to God, becomes a stuttering mess.  David speaks less and less and becomes a passive, miserable old man who cannot even name hs successor.

    

Why do we stumble in life?  Why do we stutter?  King George was punished cruelly by a nanny when he was a little boy.  She would pinch him so that he cried when he was with his parents and then she would not feed him. He stuttered because crying or talking had caused him pain. That Nanny, in so many words, was telling him that he was worthless and that he did not have a voice. And he believed her.

And after David's sin, he too began to hear voices telling him that he was not a good man and could not be an adequate father and these voices of self-hatred prevented him from taking charge of his family and protecting them from one another. God forgives David but David does not forgive himself. He becomes paralyzed, silent, passive. And his family is torn apart right before his eyes.

Today we will baptize seven little ones.  When Jesus was baptized, God spoke in a voice from heaven.  God only did this twice in the course of Jesus' life, once at his baptism and once at his transfiguration and both times, God said the same thing.  God says, "This is my Son, the beloved, listen to him."  God was telling us that Jesus had a voice and we must hear and follow that voice, for it was the voice of God.

When the waters pour over the heads of these little ones, God will say the very same thing.  I think of it as the Song of the Almighty to each beloved child of God.  God sings, "You are my Son...You are my Daughter.  You are worthy and beloved and you have a voice to be heard."

As these children grow up, no matter how hard you parents work to guide and protect them, they are going to encounter pain and suffering.  They will be told that they are not worthy.  It will happen in school one day when someone says something mean or they are passed over for a sports team.  It will happen when they work hard on an assignment at school but they do not get a good grade. It will happen when they begin to notice that there are people starving in this world and that they dont know how to begin helping. It will happen when they disappoint themselves and realize that they told a lie or let someone down. And the voices of this world will tell them to stumble and stutter, to forget who they are, that they are worthless, that they cannot be forgiven.  Sometimes these voices will get so loud that it is hard to hear the song of God.  It is hard to remember who you really are, a beloved child of God.

The hardest part of baptism to understand is that you are already loved.  God already adores you.  It is done.  You are God's child. So when the voices of the world get so loud that they make you stumble, dont forget who you are. Put on earphones and listen to the music of your baptism, to the voice of God who has already claimed you.  Sit still in prayer, come to church, worship in holiness.  Return to the music of your baptism again and again. Remember you are children who belong to God. Ironically, when we focus on God and God's music, we can find our own voice again. No one can silence a person who understands the full implications of their baptism.

Let me say that again...

No one can silence a person who understands the full implications of their baptism.

In the movie The Help, there is a two or three year old girl whose mother is a white Southern socialite. The little girl is heavy set and her mother constantly tells her that she is too fat. The black maid, Abilene, every day and sometimes multiple times a day, will take the little girls aside, hold her in her arms and say, "You is kind.  You is smart.  You is important."

King David forgot who he was, a servant of God, and that was when he made his greatest mistakes.  King George forgot who he was, a child of God with a voice, and he let the fear of his stutter consume his life.  Don't let these children ever forget what happened here this morning.  Don't let them forget what God is saying to them.  Bring them here to church regularly. You will take vows this morning to raise these children in this church. Practice the faith.  These children will not be able to remember that they belong to God if they do not listen to God regularly. Come to church and put on the earphones that play the real music, the music that tells these children that they belong to God and that they are called to serve God above themselves. A church body moves us out of self-centered isolation into the realization that our lives are precious and designed to be given in service to God.  A church reminds us of who we are. Why do you think that the baptismal font is right there, at the entrance of our Sanctuary?  We dont want you to enter this beautiful building without walking right by the place of your baptism and remembering who you are. You belong to God and to no one else.  You are a child of God, every single one of you and you have a voice.

WISE

2014. A New Year.  A chance to make a new start.  A chance to lead the life that you want to lead, to be the person that God calls you to be. 

Do you want to be wise in 2014? What would that look like, to be wise? Today we are on the cusp of the Feast of the Epiphany, the day that the Wise Men arrived at the manger.  They were so wise that they found their way to the baby Jesus. Do you want to be like that?

We call them the Three Kings but there is no word in the Bible about them being kings or about there being three of them.  They are simply called Wise Men from the East and there could have been two of them or twenty. Tradition calls them kings because they bring kingly gifts of gold, frankencense and myrrh, but then again, they were wise and knew what gifts would be appropriate for the King of Kings.  And we may picture three men because there were three gifts. 

What made them wise?  We have only to examine their behavior to see.  And the first thing that they did was to listen. They were watching the stars. They looked up and they listened. This is the most profound kind of prayer, listening to what God is doing in your life and in the world. The Wise Men took the time to reflect on the events of nature, the signs of their times and they wondered about what these things meant.  I do believe that God speaks to us through the events that surround us, both globally and locally. So ask yourself what God might be calling you to do in response to what is occurring around you.  The Wise Men listened.

The Wise Men did something else that was incredibly important.  They asked for directions.  All you men out there, do you hear me?  Wise Men ask for directions!! And I am not just talking about while driving.  How can we possibly lead wise lives if we make our decisions without the help and perspective of others? It takes courage to actually ask for feedback and evaluation, but that is wisdom, so if you want to be wise seek out those who are excellent in your field and ask them to give you honest direction and feedback.  Where are you and where are you going? You cannot see clearly from out of just your own head. The Wise Men asked for directions.

The Wise Men also were willing to move.  Life is a journey. If you think that you are going to plant yourself and get comfortable, you are not being wise.  God is often best found while we are in motion, in times of upheaval and change.  To be truly wise, you must be willing to change and adapt. You must be willing to get up and leave all that is comfortable and familiar in pursuit of God above all.

The Wise Men traveled together.  No doubt, they leaned on each other, protected each other.  God does not ask you to make the journey of your life alone.  Wisdom comes when we travel with others.  No wonder Jesus sent out his disciples two by two. So don't tackle your life alone. God meant for us to travel together.

The result of wisdom?  When, the Wise Men reached their destination, when they laid their eyes on the holy child of God, the Scripture says that they were "overwhelmed with joy." Wouldnt you like to be overwhelmed with joy in 2014? I know that I would!

And strangely enough, our Bible Challenge reading today gives us the opposite of the Wise Men.  In this reading from I Samuel, we hear of an UnWise King.  Poor Saul, who does not listen carefully to God and does not do what God asks and then gets scared and runs away from God and even tries to hunt down and kill his son-in-law David.  Saul becomes consumed with fear and insecurity and these feelings obstruct his vision and make it impossible for him to listen to God or follow God. Fear and insecurity can do that, they can obstruct your way to wisdom, block your path, cloud your vision. Never make a decision based solely on fear or insecurity for these feelings do not come from God.

Saul's story is a tragic unraveling of a man who fails to listen to God, does not trust in God and tries to make his own decisions.  As Saul's life progresses, he becomes less wise and more and more scared, insecure and angry.  He tries to kill his son in law because the people favor David and want him to be king. Instead of stepping down and honoring God's will, Saul tries to murder his competition.  And when he is in a cave going to the bathroom, David sneaks in.  David could have killed him but David is listening to God and he cuts off a piece of Saul's cloak to show he was there. Then he confronts Saul.  He explains that all this hunting is purposeless.  David is not Saul's enemy.  David says

"What are you chasing? A dead dog? A single flea?"

Saul was chasing nothing.  Nothing but his own fears and insecurities.  Nothing at all.

I suppose that, when you boil it down, wisdom consists in the choice to follow God rather than something else or someone else. For we all will follow something. Will it be your ambition? You anxieties? You might as well follow a dead dog or a flea, for these guides will take you nowhere. Or are you willing to step out of your own mind and listen to the mind of God?  Being wise is unpredictable and it is scary, for you never know what God will do next. But listen, watch, ask for directions and travel with others.

When the Wise Men arrived at the home of the baby Jesus, they did another wise thing.  They came to Jesus not to take anything, but to give.  They were not like the crowds that would later come to Jesus to be healed. They came to give. They gave gifts to God. Now, that is wise.  Nothing feeds the soul like generosity. 

And lastly, those Wise Men went home another way.  They were willing to change course and do things differently. They were flexible. They stayed away from Herod and found their way home by another route. Even after they had seen Jesus, the listening never stopped.

To be Wise, listen, ask for help and directions, lean on your friends and travel with them, be generous and flexible. And you will be overwhelmed with joy. I'm not saying that life will be easy, after all the Wise Men traveled a long way and had to work hard.  But you will find joy as they found joy. For true wisdom breeds joy, it generates joy.

2014....Will you be wise?