Monday, September 30, 2013

The God for Refugees

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Psalm 91:1-6, 9-16

You who live in the shelter of the Most High,
   
who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, 

will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress;
   
my God, in whom I trust.’ 

For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler
   
and from the deadly pestilence; 

he will cover you with his pinions,
   
and under his wings you will find refuge;
   
his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. 

You will not fear the terror of the night,
   
or the arrow that flies by day,
or the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
   
or the destruction that wastes at noonday.

Because you have made the Lord your refuge,
   
the Most High your dwelling-place, 
no evil shall befall you,
   
no scourge come near your tent.

For he will command his angels concerning you
   
to guard you in all your ways. 

On their hands they will bear you up,
   
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. 

You will tread on the lion and the adder,
   
the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.

Those who love me, I will deliver;
   
I will protect those who know my name. 

When they call to me, I will answer them;
   
I will be with them in trouble,
   
I will rescue them and honor them. 

With long life I will satisfy them,
   
and show them my salvation.
Sermon: “The God for Refugees”
We were all piled in a hot, rickety passenger van.  The kids had their ipods and cameras, snapping blurry pictures out of the windows as we sped along.  Red dust swirled all around us, despite the fact that the windows were up.  When we finally arrived into the parking lot, we all piled out, grateful for fresh air.  The conversation and laughter died. 
Down below, we looked upon the largest township in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.  Smoke rose from open fires, homes were made of mud, plywood or rusting tin.  There was no sanitation.  thousands of people, all of them black South Africans moved there by the government during Apartheid, called that township home. 
The trip back in our rickety van was much quieter.  One of the other leaders of our trip (which was a reconciliation project for Protestant and Catholic teenagers from Belfast), spoke up, her voice thick with emotion.
“You have a choice, you know,” she said.  “You can either pretend you never saw this, that you never saw that people live this way, and remain hard to it.  Or, you can let it break your heart.  God wants it to break your heart.”
And it did.  Suddenly, our ipods and digital cameras felt heavy with the weight of injustice.   In that township, children were growing up in extreme poverty because their government decided that was where they should have to live.  The elderly were forced to endure the extremes of weather, without adequate shelter.  And those who were able to work struggled to find transportation from the sprawling township on the outskirts of town to the places in the center where they could earn a living.  Life in that township was at times monotonously the same as conditions never improved, and at others, fearfully changeable as violence, storms and hunger took their toll.

You who live in the shelter of the Most High,
   
who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, 

will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress;
   
my God, in whom I trust.’ 


I sat at a traffic light in Aberdeen the other day.  It was taking its sweet time to change, and instead of switching the radio to a better station or thinking of which errands I needed to run, I opened my eyes to see those around me (and no, I was not driving with my eyes closed!).  As people turned in front of me, I looked at their faces: a middle-aged woman with an absent expression on her face, eating a sandwich, clearly accustomed to multitasking. 
A child peering out of the back window of a car, trying to spot something exciting or unexpected, while his Dad looked bored. 
An older man in a button-up shirt, with a buttoned-up solemn expression on his worried face.
Two people, presumably a couple, faces both tight with irritation, one speaking emphatically to the other, clearly angry. 
And in that moment, I had a choice.  I could have pretended that my little red car was an island in this world, that the lives of those passing me by had no impact on my own.  I could have hardened myself to their exhaustion and pain, written right there on their faces when they thought no one was looking.  Or, I could let it break my heart. 

You will not fear the terror of the night,
   
or the arrow that flies by day, or the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
   
or the destruction that wastes at noonday. 
Because you have made the Lord your refuge, 
the Most High your dwelling-place, no evil shall befall you.

They are not that different, really, the people I saw in that massive township in South Africa years ago, and the people who passed before my eyes in Aberdeen the other day.  Like us, they all seek security and peace, and wonder if life will ever get easier.  Like us, they all face the exhaustion of endless days where we do not spot anything exciting or unexpected from our windows.  Like us, they know the fear that comes when life changes too quickly with violent actions, violent words, the violence illness does to our bodies and spirits.

For God will command his angels concerning you
   
to guard you in all your ways. 

On their hands they will bear you up,
   
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.
Those who love me, I will deliver;
   
I will protect those who know my name.


The words of Psalm 91, when spoken in the midst of the injustice of systemic poverty and the disillusioned sorrow of people we pass every day, sounds like something of a fairy tale.  How is God a refuge to those who call a leaking piece of scrap metal a roof?  Where is this promised dwelling place of God, where the evils of apathy and busyness aren’t invited in?  What does it mean that we are delivered by God, when each day delivers more and more bad news?

Many pastors would just say one little three-letter word, “sin” and leave it at that.   The sin of racism and greed is why some are forced to live under leaky roofs.  The sin of worshipping our schedules is what keeps us from God’s peace.  The sin of environmental abuse, increased selfishness and failure to help those struggling most, leads to bad things happening with greater and greater frequency.

There is some truth to each of these statements.  But each of these statements assumes something very wrong about God:  they assume that our sinfulness can keep God from dwelling with us.  That is simply not true.  Or, at least, that is not the God I believe in.

You see, the God I believe in wandered with a refugee people in the wilderness in a pillar of cloud and fire to guide them.  That pillar of God’s presence wasn’t way up in the sky for those who took the time to look for it.  It was right in front of their eyes, guiding them all the way, even when they grumbled and gave up.

The God I believe in promised shelter under wings of grace, not just as pretty poetry, but as a present reality for those who felt most lost and unworthy.

The God I believe in was born in a barn (perhaps with a leaking roof) and called that dirty, smelly place the dwelling of the Most High, because he came to defeat sin with love once and for all.
 
The God I believe in sees us as we really are, and knows that we are all, in one way or another, refugees in search of home:

The intelligent child who must overcome incredible obstacles to be the first in her family to go to college, because she lives in that township in Pietermaritzburg.

The Syrian family who must leave their country to survive, even if that survival means an overcrowded camp full of strangers.

The busy mother who doesn’t even have time to feel her own loneliness, much less open up to someone else about it.

The arguing couple who believe they always have to put up a brave face of being happy and in love when they don’t even know how to talk to each other anymore.

The older man in a buttoned-up shirt who, deep down, in a place he never admits to anyone, fears that he will become irrelevant or lose his independence.

The young adult who feels he knows many people but that no one really knows, or loves, him.

This world is absolutely full of refugees – us included.
And the God who made us has a choice.  God could just look past the suffering of us refugee people, pretending not to see it.  God could become hardened to our hardships, and remain distant and disconnected from our lives. 

But the good news is this: God doesn’t.  God sees each of us fully, taking in all of our joy and pain, and God’s heart breaks for us.  And then, this broken-hearted God, says, “Right there.  That place of suffering, of isolation, of fear, that is exactly where I will go.” 

And those places in our lives and this world we thought most desolate, most deserted and desperate, become dwelling places of the divine.   

Never forget that this world is made up of refugees seeking home.  Never let your heart grow hard to your own suffering or the suffering of another.  And never lose hope in the God who wanders with us, promising,

When they call to me, I will answer them;
   
I will be with them in trouble,
   
I will rescue them and honor them. 

With long life I will satisfy them,
   
and show them my salvation. 

Thanks be to God!  Amen.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Fiscal Faithfulness


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Luke 16:1-13
1Then Jesus said to the disciples, "There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. 2So he summoned him and said to him, 'What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.' 3Then the manager said to himself, 'What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. 4I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.'
5So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he asked the first, 'How much do you owe my master?' 6He answered, 'A hundred jugs of olive oil.' He said to him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.' 7Then he asked another, 'And how much do you owe?' He replied, 'A hundred containers of wheat.' He said to him, 'Take your bill and make it eighty.' 8And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. 9And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.
10"Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. 11If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? 12And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? 13No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth."

Sermon: “Fiscal Faithfulness”

I want to tell you the story of Oskar.  Oskar was a businessman; he owned an enamelware factory in Poland.  That factory had over 1,700 workers.  1,100 of them were Jewish.  The year was 1940.  Oskar was a member of the Nazi party, but when they wanted to move his Jewish workers to a labor camp where they would be subject to random killings and abuse, he refused, and bribed Nazi leaders to save them.  He was a businessman after all – he did not want to lose most of his trained work force.  Money was his motivation to save their lives.  But gradually things changed.

Oskar began seeing these Jews not just as moneymakers, but as human beings, and took greater and greater risks to protect them and their families.  He used more and more of his fortune to bribe Nazi leaders with black market luxuries so they wouldn’t take away his workers.  When it became clear that, at their current location, they would most certainly be placed in concentration camps and killed, Oskar convinced a Nazi commandant to let him move his factory, workers included, and he did.  A list was compiled of the number of Jewish people moved and saved.  There were 1,100 names on that list, including many children. 

Oskar continued to bribe Nazi leaders with black market items to keep his workers safe until the end of World War II.  He spent his entire fortune to protect them.   Having spent all he had, Oskar had no material wealth left, and he failed at new business ventures.  By many standards, it could be said that Oskar died a poor man.  But by the standards of Jesus, he died very rich indeed. 


I didn’t tell you Oskar’s last name, but you know it already.  It’s Schindler.  And I’m betting you’ve heard of his list of Jewish people he saved.

Jesus said, “I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes. "Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? You cannot serve God and wealth.”

Oskar made friends by means of black market dishonest wealth, understanding that the holy cause of saving a people from racial cleansing was more important than the riches earned at their expense. 

His story gives us a glimpse of the economy of the kingdom of God Jesus is speaking about in this perplexing parable.  This economy of eternal riches is entirely opposite to what we understand a healthy economy to be.

You will never find a credit card company who adopts this policy of forgiving debt and only taking a portion back and not the whole thing (with interest).  You might find “In God We Trust” on our money, but you will never find a dollar bill with, “You cannot serve God and wealth.” printed on it.

Jesus is incredibly revered in our country – you need only look at bumper stickers proudly proclaiming, “Jesus is my co-pilot/rock/Savior/Lord/GPS” even.  But I guarantee y’all, that you will never see a bumper sticker that says, “Jesus is my accountant.”

It is simply not profitable to follow his financial advice.  Unless of course, he wasn’t talking about this world’s idea of profit.  Oskar Schindler lost a lifetime of hard-earned money.  But ask a family member of one who was spared a cruel death because of his selfless courage, and they will tell you that each life was priceless.

We hear quite a bit about “fiscal responsibility” these days.  We raise children with bank accounts as soon as they get their first lawn-mowing or babysitting money so they will know how to be financially responsible.  We invest our resources with wisdom so we will get more back.  We work hard to avoid spending more than we take in.  We are fiscally responsible.

But Jesus does not just call us to be fiscally responsible.  Jesus calls us to be fiscally faithful.  Faithfulness to God with our money means placing God above the bottom line, risking ourselves and our livelihoods to seek those things that are profitable in the kingdom of God.  However hard we might work, God is our Provider, and in this family of God on earth, we are called to then share that provision with others.

You see the economy of God’s kingdom and the economy of this world are very different.  In God’s kingdom, God is God, not money.  This economy does not operate from a place of scarcity, where there isn’t enough to go around and so we better not share it, lest we run out.  God’s economy runs on abundance: abundant life, abundant grace, abundant second chances. 

The world’s economy is very different.  Money is god.  And this money god does not share.  You only get what you deserve, and there is never enough to go around, so serve yourself first.  If there is nothing leftover to share with others, after you’ve made for yourself a comfortable life, well that’s just tough.  You can’t change that reality.

If Oskar had operated according to the world’s economy, 1,100 people would have certainly died.  Because our world is centered around this economy of scarcity, only sharing when it benefits us to do so, lives are lost every single day to entirely preventable things, like hunger.

Every 3.6 seconds, a person in the world dies of starvation, and most of them are children under the age of 5.  This means that 250 people will have died of hunger during the course of this sermon alone.   The United Nations estimates it would cost $30 billion a year to eradicate world hunger through agriculture and food distribution programs.  We in the United States spend $31 billion each year…on lottery tickets. 

Jesus is calling us to make a choice: to serve God or wealth.  It is a simple choice, we cannot have both, and whatever we decide will demand much of us. 

If we choose to serve wealth, there will never be enough.  We will never be truly satisfied, and the poor of this world will give their lives for our indifference, because they happen to have been born in a country or a neighborhood that is not as wealthy as ours.

But if we serve God, we trust that God will provide for us to the extent that we share our resources with faithfulness, courage and generosity.  We do this next Sunday when we bring canned goods for the hungry in our community and see this as a holy decoration for our worship space.  We serve God about wealth in the time, effort and energy we put into the Street Fair, so that with the profits gained, rather than using them to up my salary or improve our buildings, we give them away to those who most need them. 

I don’t know if any of us will emblazon our cars with “Jesus is my accountant” bumper stickers.  Somehow, I don’t think so.  But I do know that we cannot allow a discussion on the economy in our nation and world to only take place among politicians.  We as followers of Jesus are called to serve the kingdom of God above the kingdoms of this world.  And that kingdom runs on a very different economy, an economy of true riches that never run out. 

Oskar Schindler saw those true riches for what they were: each and every human being, invaluable as a child of God, and worth whatever it takes to save.  Amen.

Monday, September 9, 2013

This Fearful and Wonderful Life

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Psalm 139:1-18

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,

and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,

 O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
 and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning and
settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,

and your right hand shall hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,

for darkness is as light to you.
For it was you who formed my inward parts;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
    
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in
secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.

In your book were written all the days that were formed for me,

when none of them as yet existed.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
   
How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
    
I come to the end—I am still with you. 

Sermon: This Fearful and Wonderful Life

I sat with her in that sterile, falsely bright hospital room.  She was quite anxious by then.  I prayed.  I took bread and broke off a tiny piece, dipped it into grape juice until it was soggy enough for her to swallow and held it to her lips.  She coughed violently with the effort of swallowing that sacred morsel, but she got it down.  I also read to her:

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
 you discern my thoughts from far away.” 

We both knew rising up from that bed was something she would not do again, and that her thoughts were scattered and confused.  I continued…

Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?  If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.” 

But that hospital bed might as well have been a prison cell…she could not flee, she was there until the end.

I continued…

“If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day,
 for darkness is as light to you.” 

I imagine she was longing for some darkness to cover her in that moment, instead of that harsh, fluorescent light.  She longed to sleep, but with scary noises and lights flashing, there was no rest for her.
I continued…

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
 you knit me together in my mother’s womb.  I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
    Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.”

Fearful and wonderful: she was fearful, fearful that the next bite would get stuck in her throat and stop her feeble breath.  I’m not sure that she could even remember her mother’s face clearly at that point, much less have an understanding of being knit together in her womb.  But still, frail in that horrible pastel hospital gown, she was wonderful.  Because she was my Nana.  When I saw her, I did not see an old woman, sick in some strange room. 

I saw the woman who made me (constantly burned) chocolate chip cookies when I came to visit, who had been an avid tennis player in her younger years and who always called me “little preacher lady.”

I finished reading to her with these final words,

“In your book were written all the days that were formed for me,
 when none of them as yet existed.  How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
   How vast is the sum of them!  I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
    I awake —I am still with you.”

Those last words say, in our version of the Bible, “I come to the end.”  But they can also be translated, “I awake.”  That was the version I chose to use that day in the hospital room.   Perhaps I didn’t want to make her scared of the end, even though it was staring us in the face, and perhaps I knew somewhere in my being that this wasn’t really an ending. 

My Nana passed away two days later.

It might seem odd to read words about being fearfully and wonderfully made to a woman who was about to die, whose body was failing her.  But I don’t believe those words were ever more important than they were in that moment.  And I know that I will never be able to read this favorite Psalm of mine without picturing that moment we shared soggy, grape-juice-soaked bread together.

It was important that she knew that she was – and will always be – fearfully and wonderfully made.  It mattered that she knew that God had every day of her life counted, and that she did not have to worry about what came next, because God would take care of that, too.   

Psalm 139 is not meant as a sweet, docile poem for those sailing through life without a care.  Psalm 139 is meant for those who face death, who know that this life is only temporary, and who know that it is both fearful and wonderful.

And, really, this should describe all of us, whatever our age and whatever our health.  We are not promised tomorrow; we are promised that God has all of the days we will need counted like precious coins. 

We are not promised that today will be easy or comfortable; we are promised that whatever we face – whether we feel we are in our own personal hell or whether we feel on top of the mountain – God is there. 

So let us not mistake these words for easy comfort or superficial platitudes.  These words are a matter of life and death; my Nana knew this. 

You (and I) need to know that we are made of stronger stuff than this one life can use up.  We need to know that when there comes a day when we cannot swallow or remember the faces of those we love, God knows even our most confused thoughts.  We need to know that when we reach the completion of this life – whether you call that an ending or an awakening – God is still with us. 

So, if we are going to read these words, and even more than that, if we are going to live them, we must let go of many things.  We must let go of the assumption we can number our own days by what we do or do not eat or drink, by what someone in a doctor’s office says or by how financially prepared we are to live comfortably for many years.  None of that gives us ultimate control over the number of days we have in this life; God takes care of that, and God does not need our help.

We must also let go of the thought that life is not worth living when it is not wonderful.  This life is a precious gift.  Our very being is created by a God who poured God’s very image into us, and that image is a fearful thing.  That image has the ability to bring God’s kingdom of hope and healing to each person we meet, if only we will recognize it in the mirror looking back at us. 

If we are to live this Psalm, we must understand that we cannot create or re-create ourselves.  We need one another for that, and we need God.  But the good news is, God needs us, too. 

God needs us to acknowledge that this life is fleeting, yes, but that at the very same time, it is bursting with a holy potential.  Perhaps that’s why God invites us to a Table of grace, where somehow something as ordinary as bread, soggy with grape juice, becomes something fearfully and wonderfully holy. 

If you feel that you are ordinary, and that this life is more burden than beauty, come to this Table.  If you feel that you might not be able to swallow the grace you receive here without choking, come to this Table.  If you feel that life slips through your weary fingers way too quickly, come to this Table.

Jesus Christ is here, patiently welcoming us not just as friends, but as family, holding soggy bread to our lips and saying, “you are wonderful, do not be afraid.”  Amen.