Sermon for 8.30.09

This Week's Lessons:

http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp17_RCL.html

Gregory Peck, not long before he died, said that if you’re going to play the part of the devil you have to look for the angel in him, and if you’re going to play an angel you have to look for the devil in him.  One great example is Ferris Bueller’s Day Off , directed by the recently deceased John Hughes. 

 

Ferris Bueller, HS student and devilish angel, wakes up on a perfect sunny day and decides to ditch school – convinces his loving parents he is sick and takes off on comic adventures with his best friend, Cameron, and his girlfriend, Sloane.  Now Ferris is a slick liar and a manipulator who can get anyone to do what he wants.  But Ferris is also a kid whom everybody likes (by the time he gets home, his home is full of flowers, balloons and candy from well-wishers who heard he was sick).  He can get away with anything because, well, he’s Ferris Bueller.

 

The iconic image of this movie happens as a German parade goes through downtown.  Ferris talks his way onto one of the floats and lip-synchs “Danke Schoen”, then leads the whole dancing, cheering crowd in a rousing rendition of “Twist and Shout” – because that’s just the kind of thing Ferris Bueller does.

 

Ferris has a younger sister who resents him and an officious school administrator who’s on to him.  So a big part of the movie is Ferris weaseling his way out of being discovered. 

 

The funniest thing to me about this movie is that suburban teen adventure movies from Risky Business to Mean Girls have certain conventions.  There are popular kids, who turn out to be foolish and self-centered and have all the wrong priorities; and there are regular, average kids who triumph.  There’s a huge party, things get broken, the parents and teachers find out and there’s major trouble in store, and it all results in a transforming growing-up process for main character, who becomes an adult.

 

This movie doesn’t fit the pattern – first of all, Ferris is hugely popular not because he’s foolish and self-centered, but apparently because he’s sweet, kind and helpful.  His priorities may be mixed up from an adult perspective, but he is truly kind, to everyone from a freshman who he promises to get out of summer school, to his tightly-wound best friend, whose punishment he offers to take.

 

And at the end, everyone around Ferris has had some sort of spiritual awakening – from his sister, who meets a strung-out-looking Emilio Estevez in a police station, and he tells her, “Your problem is you.  You oughta spend a little more time worrying about yourself, and a little less time worrying about your brother.”  To his best friend, who finally gets up the nerve to face his harsh, unloving father; to the officious school administrator who gets his comeuppance by basically falling into the trap he has set for Ferris.  In fact, the only person unchanged at the end of the movie is Ferris, who has had a very pleasant day getting away with all kinds of shenanigans, and ends it untouched.  He doesn’t need to be transformed himself – he is sort of a catalyst, who helps all the people around him grow and blossom.  It’s like, anyone as devilishly sweet as Ferris doesn’t need to grow up – he is already perfect, and perfectly endearing – no need for a spiritual awakening.

 

Strangely enough, in real life, most of us aren’t like Ferris Bueller – so perfectly sweet that we don’t need to grow up and experience a spiritual awakening.  Most of us find that we need spiritual awakening and growth, nearly constantly.  Life isn’t really a matter of getting through high school and then being free to do whatever we want to.  True life presents one challenge after another, which most of us meet with varying degrees of success throughout our lives.  And the biggest challenge of life for most people ultimately comes down to this:  how do we live a peaceful, joyful, fulfilling life in the company of other people? 

 

This is the challenge that individuals, families, communities and nations face.  And it’s one challenge that I think becomes especially important for churches.  Because we are God’s beloved community, the sign of God’s love to the world, and we are called to make that love apparent in the way we interact with each other and with the world around us.  And if there is anything in life that requires spiritual awakening and growth, it is the challenge of loving our neighbors in the church and the wider community.  Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner suggested that our lifelong hope is to "become" Christians, not "be" Christians, as if such a transformation could happen in an instant.  We are all in a process of growth and “becoming,” learning day by day how to live in love with God, and with our neighbors – learning how to live as Christians.

 

Our scriptures have talked about wisdom for 3 weeks now – which is not same thing as knowledge.  We are way better at knowledge in the age of the internet than we are at wisdom.  All the websites in all the world don’t carry the same wisdom as the ancient Scriptures – they may not have had instantaneous worldwide communication, but they understood that the major challenge of life is interacting with others.  Eugene Peterson says, "Wisdom is not primarily knowing the truth, although it certainly includes that; it is skill in living. For what good is a truth if we don't know how to live it? What good is an intention if we can't sustain it?"

 

All 3 of our readings today tell us about wise living.  In Deuteronomy, we hear part of  Moses’ farewell speech as the Israelites are preparing to enter the Promised Land without him.  God has given Israelites the Jewish law – a standard of moral and ethical living – not  in order to earn God’s love or be saved, but to provide evidence of God’s salvation and be a witness to the world.  Observing the law is evidence to the world of the wisdom of Israel, and it becomes a powerful demonstration to the world of who God is. 

 

In Mark, we see what happens when people begin to forget the original purpose of the law.  The law can become only outward observance without the involvement of the heart.  Jesus makes very clever remark about what defiles a person: not what comes in from outside, but what goes out from inside.  We carry our own devilishness within us, says Jesus, and we can poison the world around us by allowing our own evil intentions to spill out.  True wisdom, says Jesus, lies in allowing God to transform, to cleanse, our insides, so that what spills out of our hearts into the human community is transforming love that in turn helps cleanse others.  Jesus wants us each to become a catalyst for world transformation – like Ferris Bueller.

 

Our lesson from James tells us something very similar:  God gave us truth and life by planting the word within us.  This seed takes root so that we ourselves become the fruit/harvest.  Then he explains how we become the harvest, how we ourselves become God’s gift to the world.  It may sound like a list of behavior rules, but it is truly a picture of God’s wisdom, lived out in community.  James tells us how to live as the beloved community, including rules for relating to others – listen, speak, be slow to anger; anger does not help the seed grow; only God’s word has the power to save.  James counsels patience, listening, open communication, choosing not to get angry, but valuing each other and treating each other with respect.  James gives us a picture of how we can live out God’s wisdom – letting it transform us in every part of our lives. 

 

James says it comes down to this:  Be doers, not hearers, of the word.  Becoming doers of the word is evidence to the world that God loves us.  The best evidence of true religion is reaching out with love to each other and to outsiders – helping orphans and widows (the most disadvantaged people in James’ world).  For us, evidence that (unlike Ferris Bueller) we have been transformed by God is our willingness to be constantly transformed, constantly undergoing process of spiritual growth, learning how to live transformed lives with each other, and focusing on helping those whose lives can be changed by our help.

 

We have talked about wisdom for 3 weeks straight now, and we’ve talked about gaining God’s wisdom through prayer, through worship, and through living as God’s beloved community, extending love to each other and to the world around us.  And it’s a great time for us to talk about wisdom, as we embark on a journey of discovering God’s wisdom for this congregation, in our visioning process.  In this process, we will be praying for wisdom, and we will be talking and thinking together about it.  But in the quest for wisdom, the most important thing of all is for us to live wisely, to treat each other lovingly, to realize that the caring community we are creating in this congregation is itself the proclamation of God’s wisdom to the world- we are the gift.  And as we allow God’s gifts of kindness, generosity, open communication, valuing each other, and love, to blossom in each one of us and in our Church, our prayer is that our church, living out God’s transforming love, like Ferris Bueller, will become a catalyst that will inspire transformation in all the people around us.  And in our life of transforming love, we will fulfill our mission of transforming lives with the love of Jesus Christ.

 

 

Sermon for 8.16.09

This week's scriptures are here:

http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp15_RCL.html

On my recent vacation in Austria, I took a tour of the old salt mine outside of Salzburg.  To get into the mine, you go the same way the miners used to go.  You get on a little train which is really just a rail on wheels, so you straddle it, hold on tight to the person in front of you, and take a ride downhill.  After a while, you get off and start walking through small, dark tunnels.  Then comes the fun part:  you slide down a slide.  Like the train, the slide is nothing more than a rail that you straddle.  Nothing to hold onto, and just a dark tunnel stretching downward in front of you, so you can’t see where you are going.  They have you slide two at a time so you can hold onto each other.  I held onto my daughter and we went sliding into the darkness, whooping and hollering.

 

If we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that all of life feels like that sometimes:  sliding a little too fast in dark, nothing to hold onto, not sure where we’re going.  I sometimes hear people quote the book of Jeremiah: I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11.  And yet, if it’s true that God knows God’s plans for us, nevertheless it’s one of the challenges of life to figure out what they are, what direction we should be going in, and not to feel like we are sliding into an unknown darkness.

 

And unlike sliding on a slide, life is not something you ride on a predetermined course.  Life is unpredictable and surprising, takes unexpected twists, and presents lots of decisions we have to make – what job to take, what relationship to enter into, what place to live, what is God’s will for us.  If we are Christian people, part of our faith is that the best way to live is in accordance with God’s will – this is the truest path to fulfillment and spiritual growth, even if it leads us to make sacrifices on behalf of others.  To begin to understand God’s will is the Christian definition of wisdom.

 

There’s a lot in scriptures about wisdom today: Psalm, Ephesians, story of Solomon.  Solomon is famous for being wise enough to understand that true wisdom is necessary to govern God’s people, and true wisdom comes only from God.  And Ephesians says that wisdom is knowing God’s will, and living any other way is foolishness; and it counsels us to cultivate wisdom through worship, being filled with the Spirit, singing and praying in community.  

 

So our scriptures today tell us some important things about life.  Living wisely is a matter of being attuned to God’s will through our personal prayer life and relationship with God (how Solomon was in touch with God).  And it is also a matter of living and worshipping in community (Ephesians).  

 

So if we are living a human existence, trying our best to see in the darkness and make the best decisions for our lives, we need to understand how to incorporate these two dimensions of wisdom:  individual wisdom, cultivated in personal relationship with God; and community wisdom, gained by sharing worship with a group of Christians who cultivate wisdom together.

 

The first thing to understand in thinking about wisdom is that wisdom is not the same thing as knowledge.  We’ve all known people with huge stores of knowledge who didn’t know how to function in the world, and we’ve all known very wise people who didn’t have much education.  Wisdom is not a matter of storing up facts– wisdom is a matter of relationship.  A truly wise person knows how to read other people and knows how to manage relationships.  And in Christian terms, ultimately we believe that true wisdom comes when we are in close enough relationship with God to hear God’s voice and understand God’s will for us and others around us. 

 

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”, says today’s Psalm.  I once had to write an entire 3-page essay on that verse on a final exam in seminary– what does it mean that the fear of the Lord is beginning of wisdom.  So I have lots of useful knowledge about this.  First, scripture is not recommending that we quake in our boots at the thought of God – it is not telling us to be afraid of the Lord in the usual sense.  When Israel talked about “fear of the Lord,” it meant something like “awe.”  It meant standing in the presence of the Lord, recognizing “there is something here that is mysterious and unexplainable and infinitely powerful, and it is not the same as me – it is something I have no name for other than God.”  And the beginning of wisdom, the very root of all true understanding of the world, flows out of that knowledge that I am ultimately not in control, that I am not the one who has wisdom, and that true wisdom flows out of my relationship with the source of all wisdom – God.

 

These days, we have lots of technology that makes it easy to stay in touch with each other.  But we don’t have a lot of knowledge about staying in touch with God – staying in touch with our old best frend from 5^th grade who now lives in Shanghai is a lot easier.  The way that Christians stay in touch with God is through prayer, and prayer is a matter of both speaking and listening, cultivating times of quiet. 

 

One truth of the Christian life is that we are in a relationship with a God who is always more ready to communicate with us than we are to listen, says Christian writer Roy Oswald.  This God is also willing to offer us direction and perspective if and when we are ready to surrender our own ideas and be ready to receive God’s.  But, he says, a lot of our difficulty in discerning God’s will comes from the fact that God will rarely overwhelm us with a message so clear and blatant that our freedom to choose is eliminated – which is why we sometimes feel like we’re sliding into darkness, with nothing to hold onto and no idea of where we’ll end up. 

 

God does speak to us in many ways, through Scripture, tradition, community, relationships, and events and experiences.  But we have to be ready to listen for God’s voice, and we have to seek out a very important gift:  the gift of discernment.  Discernment is gift that allows us to distinguish between our voice and God’s voice.  In any conversation, we always hear our own voice loudest, because we spend most of our time thinking up what we’re going to say next instead of listening, and because it comes to our ears from inside our own head, making it sometimes difficult for us to hear anything else.  In the same way, when we try to pray, it is easy to hear only our own voice and not the voice of the God who is always trying to speak to us.  As humans, Oswald says, it is very easy to think we have a “word from the Lord,” when in fact the word comes from our desire, our hubris, our dark side, or the shadow side of other people and community.  And when we listen to our own voice rather than God’s, we can often find ourselves choosing the easiest path, the path of most immediate benefit, but not necessarily the path of spiritual growth, and not necessarily God’s path for the world.

 

That is why prayer must become a lifelong habit for us, not simply something to resort to in times of trouble – we must tune our ears to hear God’s voice and not our own.  We are well-trained in our Western Christian tradition to pray in words – we know how to talk so that God will listen.  The harder task is to listen so that God will talk, opening ourselves to the presence of God, perhaps putting a prayer or a problem before God, and then quieting ourselves to listen for God’s direction.  There are ancient Christian spiritual techniques to help us do this, many of which are outlined in the “Prayer and Spirituality” section of our website, so you have a chance to try different methods and see which is the best for you.  The main thing is to set aside some quiet time for God each day and begin to cultivate a habit of relationship with God so we recognize God’s voice.  This is how we begin to cultivate personal wisdom.

 

At its foundation, scriptures tell us that wisdom flows out of worship.  Ephesians tells us today that wisdom comes from being filled with God’s Spirit, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.  And Jesus tells us that true nourishment comes from the soul food he gives us in the sacrament of his body and blood, the act we do in community that makes his own sacrifice present and real for us.  This worship is at the core of who we are as Christians and it is the way that Christ transforms us into his own likeness.  And through our worship, God pours into us his wisdom and his life, and empowers us to transform the world.

 

Back From Vacation

I've spent the last two weeks on vacation in Germany and Austria, and am (somewhat) happy to be home!  If I can figure out how to do it, I will upload some photos from the vacation to the blog - otherwise, if you are my friend on Facebook, the photos are there!  Blessings to all!