Sermon for 10.17.10

Scriptures for this week are here: http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearC_RCL/Pentecost/CProp24_RCL.html

The world watched in wonder and awe as one of the most inspiring rescue stories I can ever remember unfolded over the past week. If you’re like me, it was hard to keep from watching the dramatic appearance of one Chilean miner after another, liberated by a capsule called Phoenix from a hot underground tomb where they had been trapped for 69 days. I watched the men step out of the capsule, allow themselves to be unstrapped, and then turn and step into the arms of their waiting families while the crowd shouted “Chi, chi, chi, le, le, le,” and the world watched, and wept. And I wondered whether any of the men felt just a bit like Lazarus, called forth from the dead, stepping out of the tomb, blinking in the sunlight, whether they felt as if the voice of God had shouted to them, “Lazarus, come forth!”

And in fact, it seems that, for a number of them, their Christian faith sustained them in very real ways. Mario Gomez acted as a spiritual leader for the trapped men, requested Bibles, prayer books and religious statues, and led them in prayers twice a day. Mario Sepulveda, the jubilant second miner out, who led the crowd in cheers and chanting, jumping and hugging, said he left 40 years of his life down in the mine. “I was with God, and I was with the devil. They fought, and God won.” He said he reached out for God’s hand, and never let go. And from that moment on, he never doubted that he would be rescued.

All of them, as they emerged into the fresh air, were beige T-shirts. On the front were the words, Gracias, Senor (Thank you, Lord), and on the back were these words from Psalm 95, words which they said had brought them great comfort: “In His hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to Him.” For many of them, it seemed, God was present with them, so that it was not 33 people underground, but 34.

We can look at this miraculous resurrection of 33 miners from an underground tomb and ask ourselves – Where was God in all this? Did God reach out his hand and rescue these miners? Is the rescue attributable to a divine miracle? This is not a question that I can answer, for several reasons. First, if you didn’t believe in God at all, you could look at the careful, methodical, dedicated, impassioned work of the engineers, medical workers, psychologists and many other people who devoted the last 69 days to getting these men home alive, and credit the rescue to them – and you’d be right, in a way. It would be wrong to discount the human ingenuity that brought them home.

More than this, in general, it’s always dangerous to say what God is and isn’t doing, and why. If we assert that God rescued these 33, we have to ask ourselves why other miners die in other accidents, why perfectly kind and faithful people get incurable diseases, why hurricanes strike and innocent people are swept away. Surely we can’t say that the faith of those who die in other situations is any less valid than the faith of these miners, or that more people were praying for the miners and therefore God paid more attention.

And we know perfectly well that everyone suffers – most of us not as publicly or dramatically as the miners, most of us in ordinary, humble, common ways. We might suffer from stress, from strained relationships, from financial worries, from substance abuse (our own or that of someone we love), from grief, from health problems, from fatigue and disappointment and fear. And as your pastor, someone who has the privilege of walking that road of suffering with many people, I know that faithful and prayerful people are just as likely to endure these things as anyone else – faith is not a magic bullet that will make these struggles magically melt away.

So let’s ask ourselves: where is God in our suffering? What’s the role of faith in times like these? And that is where our scriptures give us some excellent guidance.

In Genesis reading today, Jacob is experiencing one of those nights we’ve all had: night so caught up in worry and stress that you spend the whole night wrestling with something you can’t identify – yourself, an angel, God maybe. In Jacob’s case, here’s what’s happening: Jacob has spent years deceiving, scheming and tricking others out of what is theirs. As a young man, he schemed with his mother to trick his father into giving the birthright to him instead of his older twin brother, Esau. When his father found out what he had done, Jacob fled for his life, with Esau’s threats following. He then spent years with his uncle, married his uncle’s two daughters, engineered an ingenious breeding scheme to divert most of his uncle’s sheep to himself, and when his uncle found out and got angry – he fled once more.

With nowhere to go, he heads back home, to his angry twin brother. Afraid his brother will attack with an army, he sends his wives and children away to safety, and waits alone for his brother to arrive. And in the dark night as he waits for the showdown that will determine the course of his life, indeed whether he lives or dies, he begins to struggle. The text tells us that a man shows up and they wrestle all night – and when morning comes and the man tries to leave, Jacob refuses to let go until the man gives him a blessing. Somehow Jacob has identified the man as God, or God’s messenger. And God gives him a new name: instead of Jacob, the deceiver, he becomes Israel, one who struggles with God and prevails. The angel, or God, strikes him once more, in the hip, and marks him with a wound that will make him limp for the rest of his life.

And God’s blessing seems to bear fruit – because in the morning, a miracle happens. Esau arrives, and instead of doing what Jacob fears and attacking him, Esau weeps with joy, and opens his arms, and welcomes his brother home. Is it a miracle? Nothing supernatural happens as Esau weeps and holds out his arms – yet the miracle has happened inside him – rivalry and hatred has been transformed into welcome and love, and the nation of Israel is born.

In our gospel passage, we have another story of someone who refuses to let go. Jesus tells a parable of a widow who will not stop bothering an unjust judge until the judge relents and grants her justice. Now I don’t think Jesus is telling us that the squeaky wheel gets the grease and that God is like an inattentive parent who keeps getting interrupted by an annoying child until he finally says, OK, you can have a cookie. (I would do that, but I don’t think God does!)

On one level, Jesus is saying if a bad judge will sometimes listen, how much more will a loving God listen? Of course God hears our prayers. But there’s more to it, of course, because Luke records this story at a time when the Christian community was suffering persecution and in danger of losing heart, giving up on their faith that Jesus would return. Luke, in fact, is relating this parable of Jesus’ to a group who is wrestling through the same kind of dark night of struggle and worry that Jacob did. They are wondering: where is God? And how are we going to survive? And how will we find our way out of this dark and scary place? And what is going to happen in the morning? And Jesus is telling them, God is here, right here in this struggle, God is the one you are wrestling with – God is with you – and if you have faith in God, you will find the strength you need to face these worries.

Prayer is not a matter of asking God for personal favors, personal miracles. Prayer is a matter of staying in relationship with God, knowing that in that relationship we will find the strength we need to help us through our struggles. And that as we struggle with God, as we grab onto God’s hand and refuse to let go, we will be blessed.

In the case of the Christian community hearing the parable of the unjust judge. the blessing is the deep knowledge that God is not an unjust judge, that God is loving and merciful, and that God will always be present with them – a knowledge that gives them the ability to turn their small band of dispirited believers into a worldwide movement of divine transformation. In the case of Jacob, struggling with an angel, the blessing is a personal transformation that allows him to greet the brother he fears and loves, and to see that love, not fear, comes out triumphant.

In the case of the Chilean miners, the blessing seems to have been a spirit that brought together every single person involved in the rescue, from the president of Chile to the engineers at NASA who provided special protein drinks, to every miner entombed in that dark, cramped underground cavern, and made them think of every possibility, prepare for every contingency, and engineer the perfect rescue operation. But even more than that, it seems to have been a spirit of teamwork inside the mine that refused to give up, refused to let go, kept faith every moment that God would never desert them – and brought the miners together as a group.

And in the case of you and me, with our ordinary everyday struggles, I think prayer brings us a spirit of hope. Hope that in our own long dark nights of struggle, dark nights that for some of us last for weeks or years – we may begin to understand that underneath all our worry and stress, the one we are really wrestling with is God. That God is present, giving us the hope, strength and faith we need. That somewhere in our struggles, God has a call for us. That somehow at the end of the struggle, we will be transformed. And that we, too, at the end of the dark night, will emerge blinking into the sunlight, God’s voice echoing in our minds, knowing that we have never been alone, that every moment of the way, God was present with us.

Sermon for 10.10.10

Scriptures for this week are here: http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearC_RCL/Pentecost/CProp23_RCL.html

Time magazine has an interview this week with Rabbi Naomi Levy, who writes in her new book (Hope Will Find You) about the biggest upheaval of her life. It began in the middle of a festive Sabbath meal, when a doctor called to let her know that her daughter, Noa, had a rare degenerative disease - one that usually puts children in a wheelchair by 12 or 13 and is fatal by 20. Levy’s book is about how her life was transformed by this news.

Time asked whether it sparked a spiritual crisis, and Levy replied that it was more like a spiritual paralysis. Levy said she didn’t know how to pray – she didn’t believe that God gives people diseases and disasters, that these happen in the course of nature. So if God didn’t give this disease, how could she pray for God to take it away? She found herself not sure what to say to God, unable to feel God’s presence. So she did what any parent would do: she devoted herself to her daughter, and remarkably, her daughter grew and developed.

Despite some physical and learning disabilities, the time came for Noa to prepare for her bat mitzvah, age 13, and she was still strong & healthy. So her mother, the Rabbi, began to teach her the passage of scripture she needed to recite at her bat mitzvah. The next words are Rabbi Levy’s:

“I asked Noa what her [scripture passage] meant to her and she told me, ‘Mom, I think it means if you don't like your life, if you try really hard, you can find hope.’ And then Noa corrected herself. She said, ‘No, Mom, hope will find you.’

“I gasped when Noa said ‘hope will find you.’ I lost my breath. Because I had been trying for so long to hold onto hope or to grasp for hope, but my wise child was telling me I didn't have to try so hard or hold on so desperately. She was telling me to relax, let hope in, like a kind of grace. Noa was telling me hope was looking for me. That hope would track us all down.”

Much later, Rabbi Levy learned the incredible good news that her daughter's diagnosis had been wrong. She didn't have the degenerative disease, and though she has a few learning and physical disabilities, she is now on her high school's volleyball team, and she is growing strong and healthy. What a miracle.

Hope will find us. It’s a kind of wisdom that can come only from someone who has experienced a life crisis, the kind of crisis that requires you to find reserves of faith, strength and courage you didn’t know you had. This is the kind of crisis the people of Israel are experiencing in the reading from Jeremiah today. To give you an idea of what is going on here, the prophet Jeremiah is writing to a people in exile. For years, Jeremiah had been warning that Jerusalem was on the wrong course, politically and socially, that it had strayed away from God’s hopes for it, for a just society that cares for its members and remembers its identity as the people of God; and that if it kept on course, Jerusalem was going to bring disaster on itself.

And for years, Jeremiah was ignored by people who preferred not to see the truth, preferred to listen to false prophets who said everything was fine. In 587 BC, the disaster occurred: Babylon invaded Judah and took its leaders into exile – king, priests, ruling class, artisans, educated people. And now Jeremiah, the prophet of doom, who warned them repeatedly about the disaster to come, begins to speak a new word to people who have lost hope – and that new word is: hope will find you. Wherever you are, he writes to a people in exile, live a life of hope, and hope will find you: build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat what they produce; marry and have children and create a life for the future. Where you find yourself, he says, is where hope will find you also. And though life may feel like a disaster now, God is still present in that disaster, and God is working in you and through you to bring new hope for the future.

Jeremiah goes even further than telling people to settle and find new ways to make a life for themselves – he tells them that the place where they are, the place of captivity, loss and exile – that is their mission field. As the people of God, he tells them, they must make this strange and foreign city their own city, they must seek the welfare of Babylon, work to improve it, pray for the people who are holding them captive. And as they bring new life to the city of their captivity, they will find new life for themselves – hope will find them.

If there’s any word we need to hear more clearly in our world today than Jeremiah’s words to a people in exile, I don’t know what it is. Because we are a people in exile too. News commentators tell us that we are suffering from “economic dislocation,” that the way we had learned to make our home in the world, a home built on a foundation of a strong economy and a stable culture, that world no longer exists, and we are a people in exile.

Bad news piles up day by day, news of two wars, of terrorism, of job losses, of ordinary people who can’t make ends meet, of corrupt Wall Street titans who continue to profit from the misfortunes of ordinary people. We are a people in exile from the stable and prosperous world we had known, who have to learn to find hope in a world whose foundations are shaking. And it’s not only the public world that is in exile, there are heartbreaking recent episodes of children who lost hope taking their own lives. And many of us are experiencing personal exile as well – job insecurity, economic losses, personal grief and tragedy, addiction, unstable relationships.

In this world of exile, the last thing we do naturally is what Jeremiah recommends: to pray for our enemies and seek their welfare. It is tempting instead to turn on each other and point fingers at each other, polarizing ourselves into teams that call each other names and refuse to listen or hear or give each other credit for any wisdom or courage. Into such a world, Jeremiah comes – Jesus comes – God comes – to speak a word of hope, telling us to make our home here, and make this world of exile our mission field – to make the welfare of the community around us our dream, devote ourselves to God’s mission of healing and reconciliation among these people, and in that mission we will find our own hope.

Hope means believing that God’s love and God’s mission continues in all the exiles in which we find ourselves. Hope means seeing the world more completely, understanding that underneath the reality of this exile in which we find ourselves lies a hidden dimension: God’s love, promise, and healing that is always with us.

When we read a story of healing like the one in the gospel today, about the healing of ten lepers, it is easy to focus on scientific questions like, can God really heal, and miss the larger message: that God is in every situation, that hope will find us, that what it takes to be healed and restored of all the exiles we find ourselves in is a new kind of eyesight, a sight that begins on the inside, with a complete reorientation of our minds and hearts – with hope.

In the story, tenlepers were cured of their disease; nine of them missed that message of hope. Leprosy in that time wasn’t just the Hansen’s disease that we know – it was any skin disease – an imperfection that made a person impure and disqualified them from entering the temple. And because they were impure, anyone who touched them was also impure – they were spiritually contagious. So they were banished from society and could only associate with each other.

Therefore leprosy was far more than a physical illness – it was an illness that brought slow and agonizing emotional and spiritual death as they left their families behind and went into the heartbreaking exile of leprosy. The story doesn’t say Jesus cured them of their diseases – only that he suggested that they present themselves to the priest who could pronounce them pure. Nine of them were pronounced cured and went home. One realized that hope had found him, and that one was not just cured, but healed.

When Jesus says “your faith has made you well”, he uses different word from just “cured.” Jesus is saying “your faith has made you whole, complete.” Jesus recognizes that many things can bring a cure, but faith brings healing. Faith allows us to recognize that in the place of exile, hope will track us down. It allows us to see that spiritual dimension of reality that brings wholeness and wellness of body, mind and spirit and to know that God has been there with us in exile.

Helen Keller, who was blind and deaf, wrote about the moment when her teacher held her hand under a faucet and repeatedly tapped the sign for “water” into her hand until she suddenly understood what language was. "Suddenly," she wrote, "I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten -- a thrill of returning thought, and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could, in time, be swept away. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. . . . Every object that I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me."

Helen Keller was suddenly able to see, not because her eyes began to work, but because her mind formed a pattern that made sense of the world around her. Like the exiles in Babylon, struggling with a chaotic world and finding that hope came only when then they could reorient their minds and hearts to find new hope in a strange and foreign land, Helen Keller could see, hear, and interact with people only when her soul was awakened with a strange new understanding. She was not cured, but she was healed.

When we begin to see the reality of God’s presence in all the exiles of our lives (the reality that runs through our veins, through the air around us, the reality of new sight that opens our eyes to God’s work all around us) – then, for us as for Naomi Levy, as for Helen Keller, as for the exiles in Babylon, as for the tenth leper who saw what the other nine missed: our faith gives us hope, our hope gives us mission, our mission gives us power to change the world around us, our power brings hope to the world. And this is what it means to believe in God: hope will find us.