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30 July 2006
Being the Body of Christ
This past week I spent several days mostly locked in the basement of a hotel in Indianapolis, working hard at the overwhelming task of reshaping the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). I just finished a two-year stint on the General Board of the church, and we spent four days listening to reports and grappling with various proposals regarding the structure and operations of our denomination. The docket for this meeting was over an inch thick, and filled with a mind-numbing array of information, including lots of spreadsheets. In describing such a meeting, it would be easy to lose sight of the larger context and simply declare it to be boring. What does all of that have to do with faith anyway?
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16 July 2006
16 July 2006
Letting Go of Fear - Opening Up to Blessing
2 Samuel 6: 1-19
Roger C. Lynn
July 16, 2006
A couple of weeks ago I preached a sermon which I called, "Learning to Tell a Different Story." The sermon this morning could be "Part 2." Like the story of David and Goliath, the text for today is a dramatic example of what happens when we get locked into the story that God is a god of violence.
I remember reading this story back in the days when I still thought that everything in the Bible had to be taken literally and at face value. Within those parameters I couldn't make sense of this story. Why would God kill Uzzah just because he touched the Ark while trying to prevent it from falling off the cart? It hadn't yet occurred to me to question the basic underlying premise, that God would kill anyone for any reason. But even so, I was left in a quandary, the solution to which was to assume that there must be some piece of the puzzle I was missing. I just didn't understand enough. I am now convinced that I did, in fact, understand enough. Even then I was beginning to catch glimpses of the basic problem. When we see the world through a filter of violence, the pieces just don't fit. It is not who we are created to be. It is not the framework in which the world makes sense.
In the story from 2 Samuel, look what happens when David tries to use violence as the defining theme for who God is and how the world works. For a while everything is fine. There is singing and dancing and celebration. The Ark of the Covenant (the symbolic dwelling place of God) was coming to Jerusalem. It was an exciting day filled with joy. And then something happens. One of the honor guard assigned to accompany the Ark dies. Who knows why? Maybe he had a heart attack. Maybe he got food poisoning. Maybe the lesson about God's terrifying wrath had been so drilled into him that he died of fright when he touched the Ark. The bottom line is that we don't know why he died, but the way David interpreted it, and the writers of 2 Samuel conveyed it, God killed him. The message - God's awesome power is not to be messed with.
And then the really telling thing happens. David is so unnerved that God would kill Uzzah that he changes plans and redirects the Ark away from Jerusalem. He sends God into exile. He doesn't want to have anything to do with that kind of God. And why would he? Why would anyone want to deal with that sort of god? When we proceed from the understanding that violence is the defining reality of God, we cut ourselves off from any meaningful connection with the Divine presence, because that is not who God is. We allow our fear to send God into exile.
It is only when word comes to David that the folks who had been given charge of the Ark were actually experiencing the blessing of life with God that he was able to let go of his fear long enough to allow that blessing into his life. Fear keeps us locked into prisons of our own making. The God of violence whom we fearfully send into exile is a phantom of our imagination and the long cultural legacy of believing that violence defines everything.
Rachel Naomi Remen, in her book "Kitchen Table Wisdom" (pp. 86-87) tells the story of her father and the fear which kept him prisoner in his own home. "My father was the son of immigrants. He had worked since childhood and held two jobs most of his adult life. In the evenings he would often fall asleep in his chair, his feet in a basin of warm water, too exhausted to talk. . .
"I grew up on the sixth floor of an apartment building in Manhattan. All through my childhood, there was a game my father and I would play. He would talk about his house, the house he would someday own. . .
"I was almost twenty when he and Mom bought a little place on Long Island and he retired. For a while his dream seemed complete. Some months after the place was his, I stopped by on a Sunday visit and found him asleep exhausted in his chair. A familiar sight from my childhood, but I had thought that things would be different now. My mother told me he had just taken a little job, so that they could keep the place up. Things are always deteriorating.
"On my next visit, he was asleep in his chair again. "Are you enjoying yourselves?" I asked. "Well," Mom said, "your father is afraid that someone will break in and take away everything we've worked for. He's still working because he wants to put in an alarm system." . . . Months later, my father continued to look weary. Concerned, I asked when they would be taking their vacation. My father shook his head. "Not this year - we can't leave the house empty." I suggested a house sitter. My father was horrified. "Oh no," he told me. "You know how people are. Even your friends never take care of your things the way they would take care of their own." They never took another vacation.
"In the end, my parents rarely left the house together, not even to go to the movies. There could be a fire or some other sort of vague and unnamed disaster. And my father worked odd jobs until he died. The house turned out to have far greater control over him than any of his former employers ever had."
As long as we believe that fear and scarcity and violence define the world, we close ourselves off from the blessings of God, the blessings which are our birthright and our inheritance. We are like David, sending God into exile for no good reason except our own fear. We stay locked up in our own house, holding both God and the world at bay. Let me be as clear as I possibly can - God does not kill people, not for no good reason, not for the very best of reasons, not for any reason. Violence is not who God is, and because we are created in God's image, violence is not who we are, deep down in the core of our being. It certainly is the story we've been told, over and over again, for a very long time now. But, as I said a couple of weeks ago, we need to begin learning to tell a different story. Perhaps then we can begin to let go of our fear and open ourselves to the blessing. In the words of the poet Hafiz, "Now that all your worry has proved such an unlucrative business, why not find a better job." (from The Gift, translated by Daniel Ladinsky)
Roger C. Lynn
July 16, 2006
A couple of weeks ago I preached a sermon which I called, "Learning to Tell a Different Story." The sermon this morning could be "Part 2." Like the story of David and Goliath, the text for today is a dramatic example of what happens when we get locked into the story that God is a god of violence.
I remember reading this story back in the days when I still thought that everything in the Bible had to be taken literally and at face value. Within those parameters I couldn't make sense of this story. Why would God kill Uzzah just because he touched the Ark while trying to prevent it from falling off the cart? It hadn't yet occurred to me to question the basic underlying premise, that God would kill anyone for any reason. But even so, I was left in a quandary, the solution to which was to assume that there must be some piece of the puzzle I was missing. I just didn't understand enough. I am now convinced that I did, in fact, understand enough. Even then I was beginning to catch glimpses of the basic problem. When we see the world through a filter of violence, the pieces just don't fit. It is not who we are created to be. It is not the framework in which the world makes sense.
In the story from 2 Samuel, look what happens when David tries to use violence as the defining theme for who God is and how the world works. For a while everything is fine. There is singing and dancing and celebration. The Ark of the Covenant (the symbolic dwelling place of God) was coming to Jerusalem. It was an exciting day filled with joy. And then something happens. One of the honor guard assigned to accompany the Ark dies. Who knows why? Maybe he had a heart attack. Maybe he got food poisoning. Maybe the lesson about God's terrifying wrath had been so drilled into him that he died of fright when he touched the Ark. The bottom line is that we don't know why he died, but the way David interpreted it, and the writers of 2 Samuel conveyed it, God killed him. The message - God's awesome power is not to be messed with.
And then the really telling thing happens. David is so unnerved that God would kill Uzzah that he changes plans and redirects the Ark away from Jerusalem. He sends God into exile. He doesn't want to have anything to do with that kind of God. And why would he? Why would anyone want to deal with that sort of god? When we proceed from the understanding that violence is the defining reality of God, we cut ourselves off from any meaningful connection with the Divine presence, because that is not who God is. We allow our fear to send God into exile.
It is only when word comes to David that the folks who had been given charge of the Ark were actually experiencing the blessing of life with God that he was able to let go of his fear long enough to allow that blessing into his life. Fear keeps us locked into prisons of our own making. The God of violence whom we fearfully send into exile is a phantom of our imagination and the long cultural legacy of believing that violence defines everything.
Rachel Naomi Remen, in her book "Kitchen Table Wisdom" (pp. 86-87) tells the story of her father and the fear which kept him prisoner in his own home. "My father was the son of immigrants. He had worked since childhood and held two jobs most of his adult life. In the evenings he would often fall asleep in his chair, his feet in a basin of warm water, too exhausted to talk. . .
"I grew up on the sixth floor of an apartment building in Manhattan. All through my childhood, there was a game my father and I would play. He would talk about his house, the house he would someday own. . .
"I was almost twenty when he and Mom bought a little place on Long Island and he retired. For a while his dream seemed complete. Some months after the place was his, I stopped by on a Sunday visit and found him asleep exhausted in his chair. A familiar sight from my childhood, but I had thought that things would be different now. My mother told me he had just taken a little job, so that they could keep the place up. Things are always deteriorating.
"On my next visit, he was asleep in his chair again. "Are you enjoying yourselves?" I asked. "Well," Mom said, "your father is afraid that someone will break in and take away everything we've worked for. He's still working because he wants to put in an alarm system." . . . Months later, my father continued to look weary. Concerned, I asked when they would be taking their vacation. My father shook his head. "Not this year - we can't leave the house empty." I suggested a house sitter. My father was horrified. "Oh no," he told me. "You know how people are. Even your friends never take care of your things the way they would take care of their own." They never took another vacation.
"In the end, my parents rarely left the house together, not even to go to the movies. There could be a fire or some other sort of vague and unnamed disaster. And my father worked odd jobs until he died. The house turned out to have far greater control over him than any of his former employers ever had."
As long as we believe that fear and scarcity and violence define the world, we close ourselves off from the blessings of God, the blessings which are our birthright and our inheritance. We are like David, sending God into exile for no good reason except our own fear. We stay locked up in our own house, holding both God and the world at bay. Let me be as clear as I possibly can - God does not kill people, not for no good reason, not for the very best of reasons, not for any reason. Violence is not who God is, and because we are created in God's image, violence is not who we are, deep down in the core of our being. It certainly is the story we've been told, over and over again, for a very long time now. But, as I said a couple of weeks ago, we need to begin learning to tell a different story. Perhaps then we can begin to let go of our fear and open ourselves to the blessing. In the words of the poet Hafiz, "Now that all your worry has proved such an unlucrative business, why not find a better job." (from The Gift, translated by Daniel Ladinsky)
09 July 2006
09 July 2006
If Only . . .
My friend Amy Martin sings a song she calls "What If. . ." in which she explores what I believe is a common tendency among us human beings - playing the "What if . . ." game. Our imaginations run down the most unhelpful, "worst-case-scenerio" paths until we drive ourselves crazy and find ourselves completely paralyzed with fear. "What if I do this, and then this happens, and then that happens, and then the world completely falls apart?" In her song, Amy's solution is brilliant in it's simplicity. "What if I let go of all of the What Ifs and try to be with What Is?"
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02 July 2006
02 July 2006
Brokenness & Death - Wholeness & New Life
Considering that the stories come to us across a span of almost 2,000 years, the situations seem surprisingly familiar. We know about suffering. We know about feeling cut off. We know about death. The stories of Jesus' interactions with the pain of his day are stories with which we can identify.
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