The funeral home called yesterday.
She died on Sunday.
After living 100 years. 4 months. 21 days.
She never really went to church.
Neither did her sons.
Or her grandchildren.
Or her great grandchildren.
But in a moment like this they would like a pastor to be present.
And, to say a few words.
(Their words, not mine.)
Would I do the funeral?
And, so tomorrow I will stand among them and with them.
Not to give them easy answers.
Or glib assurances.
But to reach out with my own faith.
And, my own questions.
And my own sense of the Holy.
And, for a moment
To help them stand in the presence of the mystery we call life and death.
Their lives.
Their mother’s death.
As a part of the few words I have been asked to say, I will say this:
“O God, wrap our lives in your grace that as we face the mystery of death we might see beyond the edge of today and catch a glimpse of your eternity.”
May all our lives be wrapped in that grace.
Before You Go… A Reflection for the Sunday We Recognize Graduating High School Seniors
Four years ago, when you were in Confirmation, there were probably one or two times when I said to you: “I want to make sure that, at least once, you have heard a pastor say this…” Whether that was about ways to read and understand the Bible or about sexual orientation and being inclusive or about my understanding of and relationship to those whose faith tradition is different than ours. Today, I want to that again. Before you go off to college and step towards that new tomorrow, given the public perception of Christianity, in particular, and faith/religion, in general, I would like to remind you of this. To make sure, at least one more time, you have heard a pastor who takes God and Jesus and faith seriously say this. Four things.
First, God is…
Maybe it is easier to begin with what I think God is not.
A number of years ago I attended a national gathering of church leaders. One of the buttons being handed out read: God Is Not a Boy’s Name. The message of the button was primarily about the patriarchy which is still prevalent in both church and culture, but it also serves as a reminder that, even though he is the pronoun used far to often, God is not male. Or female. Or up in the sky. And, God is not Christian. Or Jewish. Or Muslim. Or…you fill in the blank.
So, if that is not God, what or who is God for me?
I can respond to that question in several ways, but for this morning let me remind you of what I probably said to you four years ago in Confirmation. What if we thought of God as more of a verb than a noun. More as an action than a person. What if God is the source, the inspiration, to be found in acts of:
Compassion.
Kindness.
Justice.
Forgiveness.
Peacemaking.
Gratitude.
In those moments when you do those things or experience those things or see those things, there is God.
Here are places I see and experience God.
I experience something of God when the Cherub Choir sings. I see God when meals and conversation are taken to someone who is sick. I stand in God’s presence when we stand in front of a house we have helped to build in Nicaragua and the family talks about their 16’x16’ home as their mansion and the gratitude they feel. I am surrounded by God when I leave my phone at home and walk in the woods or look up at the night sky. God is present when I and we work with others to make our congregation and our community and our country and our world a bit better today than it was yesterday.
In all those times and places God is.
Where is God for you?
I hope you take the time to notice.
Second, how large a circle and which way will you face?
Religion or faith or God…whatever word you would like to use…is about the circle around your life and about which direction you will face. Some people use their faith to make the circle around their life as small and as tight as possible in order to define who is in and who is out and who is right and who is wrong. Do it my way or our way and you are in. Don’t and you are out. Believe this way and you are in. If you don’t you are out. Look like me. Talk like me. Dress like me and you are in. If you are different you are out. I think, more often than not, that way of thinking about God or faith or religion is harmful and does violence to others. And, those who define God that way look like a football huddle.
Facing inward.
Only looking at each other.
Backs turned to the world.
My understanding of the witness of the Bible and the teachings of Jesus is that we are to make the circle around our lives not smaller, but larger. Not only inviting people in, but moving it outward until it encircles more and more. The witness of the Bible is that all are made in the image of God.
All of us are named as children of God.
And we are called to be neighbors to each other.
And rather than facing inward and walking backward, we are to face outward; to see and to recognize those in front of us for who they are. And to walk forward until they are encircled.
Third, know the story.
I have never read the Bible cover to cover.
I have tried, but I have gotten bogged down in genealogies and lists and laws.
And, I am not asking you to.
But, I am encouraging you to know enough of the story that when those moments of decision or judgement or choice come up in your life you have a touchstone and a point of reference which will help you decide what to do or how to act or which can be a source of understanding and strength.
That story…
Our story…
Includes what I read this morning.
Blessed are the merciful.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
You are the light of the world.
Treat others as you would like to be treated.
And, what about the stories in the Bible about confronting giants, because there continue to be giants in our world. Or, what about the stories of not wanting to do what you know you are supposed to do or called to do? For those moments will arise in your life. And, what about the stories of sowing seeds of making a difference or being blind and then being able to see.
Know those stories.
And, notice I said story and not Bible.
That is intentional.
Again, going back to Confirmation. I urge you to read the Bible as story and poetry and not as science or a newspaper. The Bible is inspired and contains truth, but it is not meant to be read literally.
Fourth, community.
Look around you.
You probably know some of the people here.
You probably recognize a few others.
But there are many here you probably don’t know.
That is okay.
But, here is the thing.
All these people are the ones who, in ways large and small, have cared for you and prayed for you and supported you. These are the people your parents chose to stack around your life to help you grow up to who you are today.
As a community, we are far from perfect, but we try.
We try to care for one another.
We try to support one another.
We try to challenge one another.
We add our faith and our hope and our money and our energy to the community called Bedford Presbyterian Church in order to do what we can to make the world closer to what we think God intends.
The question I have for you is this. As you step towards what comes next in your life, what is that community going to be for you? The community which will support you and encourage you and challenge you to do and be your best?
Where are you going to find it?
What is it going to look like?
What values do you want it to hold out in front of you?
What I think I know is it will look different than this. Different from what I have known and from what you have known growing up here. What I hope is you is this:
That you have the vision and the courage to find it and shape it and to be a part of it. That it does for you tomorrow what this community has done for you as you grew up.
And finally…
The comedian, Jimmy Fallon, was the surprise guest speak at the graduation ceremony at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. Do you recognize the name of the school? It is where, on Valentine’s Day, a fellow student killed 14 classmates and 3 staff members. Taking that that tragedy and pain, a number of those students launched the #NeverAgain movement and, this summer, will be traveling the country registering young adults and encouraging them to vote. I read Jimmy Fallon’s speech and would share this part of it with you because it applies to each of you, as well.
Most commencement speakers, they’ll get up here and talk in the future tense. ‘You will succeed. You will make us proud. And you will change the world. Most commencement speakers say, ‘You are the future.’ But I’m not gonna say that, because you’re not the future. You’re the present. You are succeeding. You are making us proud. You are changing the world, so keep changing the world and keep making us proud.
Caught Not Taught
This Sunday, we will celebrate the Confirmation of seven young men who have been a part of our congregation’s Confirmation program this year. They will stand in our midst. They will share their Statements of Faith, a snapshot at 14 or 15 years old of what they think and understand and believe about God and what it means to follow Jesus. And, as a congregation, we will gather around them, both literally and figuratively, knowing that the promises we made when they were baptized are not yet fulfilled.
I have led Confirmation classes and programs for forty years.
It is still something of a mystery and challenge of how to help young adults make room in their lives and thinking for that which we know and name as God and to ask and explore the question of what it means to listen to the words of a person who lived 2000+ years ago. And, to let those words reshape your life.
I don’t remember where I first heard it, but I think it is true.
Faith is caught not taught.
So my hope is that somehow in those hundreds of conversations over all those years I have been contagious. That something of my own life and faith, something of my own questions and searching, something of my own sense of the Holy and efforts to follow Jesus has rubbed off.
So, to those who are being confirmed on Sunday.
Go with God.
And, may your strength and vision be added to mine as we do our best to bend that long arc of history in the direction of justice and do our part of help God’s Kingdom come a bit closer for us and for all.
7 Questions: A Conversation
Following worship this morning, seven young men, who since last October, have been meeting on most Sunday afternoons with Kathy and me as a part of our Confirmation program, will meet with leaders of our congregation to share their Statements of Faith which they have been asked to write, and to talk about what their experience in Confirmation has been like including what they have learned and what questions they still have. Next Sunday we will recognize them. And celebrate with them and their families who they are and the faith and the questions and the hopes that are a part of their lives. It is a wonderful moment for them and for us.
A couple weeks ago, as Kathy and I were trying to wrap up the year and to pull together threads of the various conversations we had had, we came up with seven questions for our evening conversation. One question for each of the students. We wrote the questions on note cards and placed them face down on the table. One by one, each student drew a card, read the question and shared their response. Then the rest of us were invited to add our thoughts as well.
Which leads to this.
One of the comments I regularly receive as we approach the end of Confirmation is how impressed adults are with the ability of 14 year olds to put words around their faith. So, as I thought about them and what we ask them to do and thought about you and our time together this morning, I thought “Why don’t we give you the opportunity to do what we asked 14 year olds to do.” So, here are the questions we asked:
- How would you describe God to someone who had never been to church?
- What do you think prayer is? How do you pray?
- What does it mean to follow Jesus (vs believing in Jesus)?
- How would you describe BPC to someone else? And, describe why you are a part of BPC.
- What does faith mean to you?
- What do you do or can you do as a reminder of what it means to follow Jesus?
- Is it possible to be a Christian (follow Jesus) and also believe other religions are just as worthy, meaningful and truthful?
We had a hour with them.
We only have 10-15 minutes with you, but we will give it a try.
Kathy has the cards and a microphone.
Who would like to chose one and start the conversation?
Besides being respectful, the only thing you are not allowed to make in Confirmation is “I don’t know.” That rule applies to this morning, as well.
And so the conversation began.
What Would You Like Me To Do For You?
I remember the first time this story from Mark’s Gospel became more than just another story in the Bible for me. I had been on a Midnight Run on a Friday night. Handing out clothes and coffee and soup to groups of men and women at various locations in midtown Manhattan. Everyone was huddled and bundled against the cold. A faceless, nameless group anxious to get clean clothes and dry socks and something warm to eat and drink and then return to their cardboard box or their corner out of the wind. And we were anxious to get back in our vans. The next morning, still a bit tired from being out late on Friday night, I walked into my office to read through the scripture reading for Sunday and to make sure I was ready for worship. The scripture for that Sunday was the same as the scripture reading for this morning. Mark 10. Blind Bartimaeus. Son of Timaeus. Beggar who spent his days sitting in the dust on the side of the road just outside Jericho. That Saturday morning was the only time I remember ripping up what I had written earlier in the week to write something entirely different for the sermon for the next day.
My guess is you know enough Hebrew to catch the irony in the passage. Bartimaeus. Son of Timaeus. Bar. Meaning son of. As in Bar Mitzvah. Even though he had lived in that town his entire life, nobody knew his name. Only that he was Timaeus’ son. Bar Timaeus. This scripture and that insight changed the way I interacted with others especially those who were and are invisible to me most of the time. Those with whom I had interacted on that Midnight Run the night before. Those families and neighbors who I get to know on work trips to Appalachia or Nicaragua. Those whom I welcome when we host the Emergency Shelter Partnership. The check out person at the grocery store.
Now, I do my best to make sure I introduce myself.
And, do my best to notice or to ask them and then call them by name.
They deserve, at least, that much.
Something similar happened when I read through this passage again this past week and thought about and planned for this morning. Instead of the name, what caught my attention this time is the question Jesus asked. Reading through this story, the way I heard Jesus ask the question was not out of a sense of exasperation like you and I might sometimes do when being interrupted or being asked to do one more thing. Throwing up our hands and saying, “What do you want me to do for you?” But, as I read the story, I heard Jesus asking the question with a sense of openness and honesty and genuine concern for the person who now stood in front of him. Beggar’s cloak discard, Jesus could now look him in the eyes. “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus said. “How can I help?”
I think one of the reasons this question jumped out at me, is that I had recently stumbled across and have been thinking about this reflection by the Rev. Gene Robinson, retired Bishop in the Episcopal Church. Bishop Robinson wrote: I think people often come to the synagogue, mosque or church looking for God and what we give them is religion.
They come looking for God and we give them….
What to believe.
How to believe.
What to do.
How to act.
We use our churchy words and say our churchy prayers and sing our churchy hymns. We stand up and sit down on cue. Please understand. I am not criticizing. All these things mean something to many, if not most, of you. They mean something to me. But, in light of the Gospel and Bishop Robinson’s reflection, I find myself asking the question.
Are there those who wait alongside the road?
Overlooked?
Invisible to most of us?
Waiting.
Looking.
Maybe even hoping for something.
Maybe not even aware that they are waiting or looking or hoping, but there. All around us.
Who are all those others who are NOT here.
Our children and our grandchildren.
Our neighbors down the street.
Our neighbors who look like us and those who don’t.
Do we see them for who they are?
Do we recognize them?
Do we care enough about them not just to see them, but to ask what they are looking for?
To ask what we can do for them?
Or, who we can be for them?
Is it true that all we have offered them is religion?
When what they are looking for…longing for… is…
Hope.
Forgiveness.
Awe.
Wonder.
Gratitude.
Welcome.
Here is what I know.
Or, at least think I know.
Two things:
- I think Bishop Robinson is right.
I think we are more accustomed and comfortable in offering people religion rather than an experience of God. Or a window onto the Holy. - An indicator of this is that much of what we do and how we do it, while meaningful to us, is not connecting with others. All the demographics tell us that and trend in that direction.
Maybe that is because religion is easier and safer.
Because that experience of the Holy…
Our experience of God…
Is so personal and fluid we find it hard to put words around it.
How do you talk about that moment when you were saved?
Or describe that moment when awe buckled your knees?
Or, when you experienced a forgiveness which broke open your life?
Or, when that Something More filled your being to overflowing and changed who you are and how you live?
I don’t have any great wisdom here.
Let alone answers.
Just my intuition that Bishop Robinson is right and that the question Jesus asks Bartimaeus somehow connects with and has something to do with all of this. And, the belief that the more we ask and and the more we talk about this and the more we do our best to live out the question the more we create space for both us and others to turn towards that Something More which even today…even now…waits to turn our lives right side up.
Faith or Politics
Evangelical voters in Alabama have to choose either faith or politics. In their decision about whether or not to vote for Roy Moore they can’t have it both ways. I say this because, more often than not, the Christian faith and the witness of the Gospels stands on the side of the of the forgotten and the ignored and the disenfranchised and the abused. Jesus’ focus on what he named as the Kingdom of God and his repeated challenges to the misuse and abuse use of both religious and political power stands as a testimony to that fact.
I believe the women.
And, the managers of the mall.
And, just like all the Roman Catholic priests and all the Protestant ministers who, for too long, were transferred from one parish to the next when allegations were made and who now are being held accountable, Roy Moore, as well as all the others who have harassed or abused women, also need to be held accountable for what they did. As I have said publicly on several occasions, if I had done what Roy Moore has been accused of doing I would not only lose my job, but I would be stripped of my ability and credentials to be a pastor. His actions are not only an abuse of the girls and women. They are also an abuse of power.
But if they chose politics, which is their prerogative, leave faith out of it.
Leave God out of it.
Leave the Bible out of it.
Be honest enough to say you are choosing politics over faith.
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