Author Archives: mbj

When the Call Comes

I am not much of a fisherman.  Except for a single lesson in fly fishing, my experience of fishing is limited to a few summer afternoons, when as a kid I dangled a line off the edge of a dock in a Minnesota lake and tried to snag a sunfish.  I don’t remember ever catching any.

You may know a lot more about fishing than I do, but even if you don’t, I think we can all imagine the moment when Simon Peter throws himself to the bottom of a smelly fishing boat and kneels at Jesus’ feet.  Peter and the other fishermen must be exhausted.  They have been working hard – they were up all night on the lake of Gennesaret (also called the Sea of Galilee), casting their nets again and again and pulling nothing in.  Fishing can be dangerous, as we know only too well from recent losses off our own Atlantic coast, and it can be frustrating, too.  So Peter and the other men are tired.  Their muscles are sore and their spirits are low.  Their hard work has come to nothing. 

As the sun rises, these dispirited men get out of their boats and wearily rinse their nets at the side of the lake.  As they wash up, wanting nothing more than the relief of going to sleep, Jesus arrives, along with a crowd that is eager to hear him speak about the ways of God.  Jesus takes a look at Peter and asks him to take him out in his fishing boat a little way from shore, so that everyone can hear what Jesus is saying.  Who knows how Peter feels about that request – whether it is annoying, because he wants to go straight home to bed and be done with his stupid boat, or whether he is glad, for news of Jesus’ power has begun to spread around the region and Peter’s own mother-in-law has been healed by Jesus’ word [Luke 4:38-39].  So maybe Peter invites Jesus into his boat with just a tiny sense of expectation, with just the slightest flicker of hope. 

Then Jesus sits down in the boat and begins to speak.  The story doesn’t tell us what Jesus says, but we know that Peter can hear every word.  I imagine how intently Peter is listening, how closely he watches the expression in Jesus’ face, noticing every gesture, hearing every intonation in his voice.  Whatever Peter heard Jesus say that morning as the sun rose and the waves lapped against the side of the boat, whatever Peter heard and saw in Jesus that day, “it won him heart and soul.” (1)

Common sense would tell Peter not to fish again – the time for fishing is at night, and after a long and futile night’s work it’s clear that no fish are anywhere nearby – but tired as he is, Peter does what Jesus asks him: “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch” [Luke 5:4].  So the fishermen throw their nets down again, letting them drop into the deep, and up comes an enormous and unexpected catch, fish upon fish, so that the nets are close to breaking and the wooden boats are creaking under the weight.

Something sends Peter to his knees – maybe Jesus’ power to create a miracle, to create life where there was no life – maybe Jesus’ sheer goodness, the holiness of this man, his astonishing transparency to God.  But in any case Peter is suddenly stricken with awe and with a piercing sense of his own sinfulness in relation to the goodness of God.  He throws himself before Jesus to the bottom of the boat, and there, with the smell of fish in his nostrils and the hot sun burning his neck, he whispers, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” [Luke 5:8].

And then the call comes, for this is a story about call.  “Do not be afraid,” Jesus says to Simon.  “From now on you will be catching people” [Luke 5:10]. The word translated “catch” means “to take alive in the sense of rescuing from death.” (2)  From now on Peter and the other fishermen will be sharing with Jesus in the work of plunging sinners into the waters of baptism and pulling them out into new life, of reaching into the deep waters of the psyche and bringing forth healing and wholeness, of gathering up the least and the lost and setting people free.

It is good to notice when the call comes: in that electric moment when Peter perceives the power and goodness of God and understands his own sinfulness, his basic unworthiness.  Peter knows that he is nothing compared to the glory of God.  And yet he is called.  The same power that casts him down is the power that will lift him up.  Despite his fear, despite his reluctance, he is the one that Jesus calls.

The same pattern shows up in the other two readings, too.  Isaiah is in the temple when his call comes.  Isaiah is given a vision of God, of “the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty” [Isaiah 6:1] and of the space being filled with holy presences from another world, seraphs that sing to each other the words that we’ve carried into our Eucharist, “Holy, holy holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory” [Isaiah 6:3].  In the blaze of that glory, Isaiah is overcome by his unworthiness: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips!” [Isaiah 6:5] Unworthy he may be, but God redeems him and sends him out to preach, and Isaiah’s hesitation and fear are transformed into quiet confidence: “Here am I; send me!” [Isaiah 6:8].

Or take Paul, who had a vision of the Risen Lord and who says in today’s reading from First Corinthians that he knew he was “the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because [he] persecuted the church of God” [1 Corinthians 15:9].  And yet by God’s grace his whole life has turned around and now he “[works] harder than any of them – though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” [1 Corinthians 15:10].

That is so often the pattern of call, whether it happens at the bottom of a boat, in the middle of worship, on the road to Damascus, or anywhere else: we are confronted by God’s enormous beauty and power and by a deep sense of our own weakness and unworthiness.  And yet God calls us. 

We try to object.  It doesn’t make sense.  Look, says Simon Peter, says Isaiah, says Paul, “You’ve got the wrong guy.  I don’t know why you are talking to me or why you are showing me these things.  I’m not up for this.  I’m not good enough.  I can’t do it.”  Jeremiah says, as we heard last week, “What are you thinking, Lord? I’m only a boy.”  Amos says, “Hey, I’m only a shepherd.”  Moses says, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt? I’m no speaker.  I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.  O, my Lord, please send someone else” [Exodus 3:11, 4:10, 4:13].

Our new Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman to be elected primate in the Anglican Communion, spoke in a recent interview about her call to this position.  She is a woman of many gifts, but she is also innately shy.  She talked about how she lay awake, worrying, before making her first seminar presentation in graduate school, and then she added, “I think there is some incredible sense of divine humor in calling somebody who is that much of an introvert to do the kind of work I’m doing.” (3)

I’m impressed that she kept going despite her reservations about herslef.  It is so easy when we hear a call – when God speaks to our secret heart,  when we hear a world crying out for our help, when we feel invited to do something much larger and bolder than we imagined – it is so easy to pass the buck.  Isn’t that true?  I know that I do, anyway, half the time.  “Look,” we tell God, “I’m too young.  I’m too old.  I’m tired.  I’m an introvert.  I’m no leader.  I’m busy.  I have other things to do.”

Have you ever heard the story of how Martin Luther King got started as an activist during the Montgomery bus boycott?  I recently came across a short piece that tells the story: (4)

“In 1955, King was fresh from seminary, only 26 years old, and new to town. His church was one of the smallest, wealthiest, and most conservative of the two-dozen African-American churches in Montgomery. His personal ambitions at the time were to run a solid church program, be well paid for it, have a nice house for his growing family, write theology pieces for his denomination’s magazine, and do a bit of adjunct teaching at a nearby college. He was not dreaming of becoming a leader in the struggle for civil rights, economic justice, and a peaceful U.S. foreign policy.”

The writer, Steve Chase, goes on, “Indeed, if it had been left up to King, the Montgomery Bus Boycott would never have happened. The real organizer of this effort was E. D. Nixon, an experienced civil rights and labor activist who…   launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott within… four days after Rosa Parks’ arrest for refusing to move to the back of the bus. It was Nixon who recruited King to the civil rights movement.” Nixon bailed Rosa Parks out of jail, and then he “went home and started calling local ministers to line up their support for his boycott idea.”  First Nixon called Rev. Ralph Abernathy, and the man said yes.  Next he called Rev. H. H. Hubbard, and he too said yes.  And third he called Rev. Martin Luther King, who said to him, “‘Brother Nixon, let me think about it awhile, and call you back.'”

“When King finally agreed to come to a meeting, Nixon… told King, ‘I’m glad you agreed, because I already set up the first meeting at your church.’ At this first ministers’ meeting, King was… nervous about Nixon’s idea of conducting an illegal boycott campaign.  Several other ministers soon began to side with King against the campaign. In his own memoir… King recalls how Nixon exploded towards the end of the meeting and shouted that the ministers would have to decide if they were going to be like scared little boys, or if they were going to stand up like grown men and take a strong public stand against segregation. King’s pride was so hurt by Nixon’s comment [that] he shouted back that nobody could call him a coward. [To] prove his courage, King immediately agreed to Nixon’s plan for an aggressive community-organizing campaign to build up the boycott. Everyone in the room quickly agreed with King and the matter was settled.”

Then they had to decide who should lead the group.  “Everyone present… expected Nixon to lead. But Nixon said he wouldn’t be part of the group unless the man he named would lead.  Who was he nominating?  Martin Luther King.  Having just announced “his courage to the whole group, King felt… he had to agree to take on this responsibility.  Then, Nixon told King [that] he would have to give the main address” that night at the rally to announce the boycott plan to the black community.

“King rose to Nixon’s challenge” – and, we might add, to God’s challenge, too.  King served for the next 12 months as the leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and in the process he was changed.  He learned about the courage of ordinary people to work together to resist oppression.  He learned about the power of non-violent direct action.  He learned about his own power to inspire people to become active citizens.  As Steve Chase puts it, “King discovered just what kind of person he wanted to be in this life.”  He embraced his mission as an activist leader to build what he called the “Beloved Community.”

I love that story. Hardly anyone feels up to the call.  Sometimes we need a brother or sister in Christ to nudge us along – something that I know from my own life, too.  It feels too hard – whether God is calling us to fight racism, or to take hold of the Millennium Development Goals and eradicate extreme poverty by the year 2015, or to face the catastrophe of global warming and to push our leaders to make a decisive transition to clean, renewable energy. 

“Woe is me,” we may want to say.  “I am not up for this.  I am a man, a woman, of unclean lips.  Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful person!  Send someone else!” But here is Jesus, smiling at us in the sunlight, sitting with us in our small boat and asking us to set out into the deep and let down our nets for the catch.  “Do not be afraid,” he tells us.  “I will be with you all the way.”  And through the grace of God, maybe we will answer, “Yes, Lord, I will do it.  Here am I; send me.”  

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(1) G. B. Laird, Saint Luke, Middlesex, England; New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1963, p. 90.

(2) Fred B. Craddock, John H. Hayes, et al., Preaching Through the Christian Year: Year C, Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press, p. 98.

(3) Quoted in “Grace Under Pressure,’ by Diane Rogers, in Stanford, January/February, 2007, p. 51.

(4) “Martin Luther King’s Journey to Activism,” by Steve Chase, Ph.D., Director, Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program Department of Environmental Studies @ Antioch University New England; Steven_Chase at antiochne.edu; 603-283-2336 (office).

Water Into Wine

Water into wine. When in your life have you experienced water turning into wine?

Maybe one night you have a bad sleep. You toss and turn, fretting about something that you just can’t shake – maybe a financial concern, or a conflict in your family, or the increasingly hellish war in Iraq. Feeling utterly defeated, somewhere before dawn you finally haul yourself out of bed, pull on your clothes, and go outside. The last stars are shining, the morning air is cool on your cheeks, you breathe in the tang of frost and grass, and for some reason your worry and preoccupation fall away. You take a deep breath and you know you can go on – and not only go on, but go on with fresh energy and hope. Standing there in the front yard, you are inexplicably happy, for suddenly it comes to you that life is good, life is a gift. The day ahead of you is wide open, full of possibility. You can’t help but rejoice.

Water into wine.

Or maybe it happens one evening after a long hard day at work, or a long hard day at home. It’s that strenuous period in the late afternoon, early evening, when everyone is tired, everyone is hungry, and everyone is getting on each other’s nerves. You feel so tempted to lash out, so ready to give someone a piece of your mind and just let loose with all the pent up frustration of a difficult day. But instead for some reason you contain yourself. You remember how much you love these dear people, how much you want them to be happy even if they bug you sometimes, and all at once your turmoil drops away and the path ahead of you is clear. Out of your mouth come words that are gentle; you say something kind or you make a little joke, and before long everyone is laughing and your household is at peace.

Water into wine. When in your life have you experienced water turning into wine?

Here is when it last happened to me: last Wednesday. I spent a week at a wonderful writing conference in California and then came the time to to fly home. Before I got on the plane I called my sister from the airport, and she warned me about the high winds moving up the East Coast.

“You’d better take some Dramamine,” she suggested, very kindly. “It will put you right to sleep so you don’t worry about a thing.” She knows I can be a bad flyer – I’m the type who notices every little bump and air pocket, and peers anxiously out the window and clutches the armrest.

I decided not to buy any Dramamine but I did keep in mind the possibility of ordering a glass of wine once I got on board – something to take the edge off my anxiety. I got on the plane and we took off, and I began reading a book about God’s creativity. The flight was smooth, so I forgot about ordering any wine, and I put the book down and began to think about my life. You know how it is on a plane sometimes, when you are above the earth and from that height you seem to see your life whole, so that you can look back into the past and ahead to what comes next? I surveyed my life and all the things I was grateful for – all the people I loved, the dear friends I’d left behind in California and the dear friends and family I looked forward to seeing in Massachusetts, all the work I had done in the past and the work I still hoped to do in the future, and before long I was launched into that prayer of thanksgiving that I’d grown up saying in services of Morning Prayer – “Almighty and most merciful Father, we thine unworthy servants do give thee most humble and hearty thanks for all thy goodness and loving kindness to us and to all whom you have made. We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life…” [BCP, p. 58]. I know that some of you know that one by heart.

I was completely immersed in the desire to thank God, completely filled with expressing love and praise. It was as if my eyes, my attention, my whole spirit was fixed on God and filled with God. We began to make our descent into the Hartford airport, and sure enough, the gusts of winds became very strong. The airplane began to bounce around violently, up and down, side to side, and it got very quiet in the cabin. I knew that the passengers around me were nervous, and I heard the man across the aisle say to his friend, trying to sound nonchalant, “I sure hope the pilot has both hands on the steering wheel!”

But for once the turbulence didn’t bother me. I was completely absorbed in gratefulness and joy, completely caught up in praising God. My only regret was that if the plane crashed, my family would think that I had died full of fear, and I wanted somehow to tell them, “Don’t worry – I died happy! I died giving myself to God, and I died full of joy!”

Water into wine.

Well, as you can see, the plane didn’t crash, and I’m here to tell you what you already know from your own life: Jesus turns water into wine. He did it not only once, in that long-ago wedding at Cana when the wine ran out and Jesus took the six large stone jars of water and turned their contents into the finest, most delicious wine anyone could imagine. He also does it today, in my life and yours, in all those occasions when we find ourselves caught up in that mysterious, unlikely transformation of despair into hope, of fear into gratefulness, of sorrow into joy.

There must be a river of divine creativity at the very center of things, ready to pour into the most ordinary moments of our lives so that we are filled again with reverence and wonder and fresh possibility. I wonder if we are rather like those stone jars in the story, standing in place full of plain, everyday water, stuck in our habits and fixed ways of thinking, repeating our endless stories of argument, worry and lament, and then along comes Jesus to quicken our hearts and wake us up and fill us with his wine. It’s better than drinking hard liquor, that’s for sure, and I wonder, as Carl Jung once suggested, whether an alcoholic’s addiction to spirits isn’t a misplaced search for the Holy Spirit, that delicious and intoxicating presence that gladdens our hearts and draws us out of ourselves and gathers us up in love.

Water into wine.

Today’s passage from the Gospel of John is the first of seven so-called “signs” that John offers his readers to reveal who Jesus is, to disclose his true nature and divine glory. The image of turning water into wine isn’t original to John. The Greek god Dionysius – also known as Bacchus – was said to turn water into wine, and the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria wrote that the Logos, the creative power of God, gave the people wine instead of water. But I find it fascinating that this story is central to Christianity, so that the story of Jesus turning water into wine should have such primacy of place. John’s Gospel makes it the opening event in Jesus’ public ministry.

What does that mean? Among other things, it means that the Christian life is a life of ecstasy. “I have come that they may have life,” says Jesus elsewhere in the Gospel of John. “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly” [John 10:10]. “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” [John 15:11]. As I learned from Henri Nouwen years ago, Jesus calls us to live the ecstatic life, a life in which we move out of the static place. That is the meaning of the word: ex-static. Jesus calls us to live away from the same old place, that tired, dead, fixed place where nothing new can break forth, nothing new can be born. If we don’t expect anything new to happen, life soon gets flat and dull and loses its vitality. We feel utterly defeated, we turn cynical and sour, and life becomes “the same old same old.”

But Jesus turns the water into wine. God intoxicates us with new life and new hope. The ecstatic life is the creative life, a life that is open to surprise.

There are disciplines that open us to the ecstatic life, practices that make us available so that when the Spirit comes, the water of our lives can be turned into wine. I’d like to mention just two of them.

One is to learn to praise God. We hear it all the time at the Eucharist – “it is right to give God thanks and praise” – but I want to add, it is not only “right,” it is not only “right and good and our bounden duty” as we say in the Rite 1 version of the Eucharist – it is also the secret of joy! There is nothing that opens us so quickly to God’s presence as the practice of giving thanks and cultivating a grateful heart. I can’t explain it, but finding a way to praise God and give thanks is like priming the pump of joy: before long our empty places are filled and what was once just another ordinary day has turned into something vibrant and alive. Prayer is the secret place where our inner waters turn into wine.

A second practice that opens us to the ecstatic life is the practice of healing. The question we need to ask ourselves is: Does what I do bring healing? Does what I do bring new life? Does what I do make new connections among people or encourage other people to open to new life? An ecstatic life is a life in which our focus is not so much on ourselves and the state of our own inner “waters,” but a life in which we plunge into the possibility of turning other people’s water into wine.

Take, for instance, the possibility of creating peace with every word you speak, so that what you say is so accurate and true, so filled with God’s loving Spirit that communication opens up with everyone around you. That’s a way to live an ecstatic life, and if that appeals to you, I hope you’ll show up on Wednesday night for the first in our series of evening programs on non-violent communication.

Or take the possibility of healing the Earth. You know that 2006 was the hottest year ever, and that 2007 is right on track to top that scorching record. OK – water into wine. What if we created the biggest demonstration against global warming in U.S. history? What if we decided that 2007 was going to be the year that American citizens reached the “tipping point” and finally pushed their political leaders to lead? That’s exactly what we intend to do with the Interfaith Walk for Climate Rescue, an interfaith pilgrimage that will begin in Northampton on March 16 and end in downtown Boston on March 24. I hope you’ll sign up to walk. I hope you’ll invite your friends and neighbors to sign up to walk – just go to climatewalk.org. You can sign up as an individual or as part of the “Grace Church, Amherst” team. You can walk for an hour, a day, a weekend, or the whole nine days. But I invite you to walk with us for at least a little while as we step very literally into an ecstatic life and move out of the static place.

I like to think that Martin Luther King, Jr. would be walking with us, if he were alive today. On the eve of his birthday, maybe he is the man to lift up as an example of what it means to live an ecstatic life, as you and I explore what it means to praise God in our own lives, to work for healing, and to give ourselves wholeheartedly to that mysterious, marvelous, God-centered alchemy of turning water into wine.

Birth Pangs

“Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering,
for he who has promised is faithful.” Hebrews 10:23

Have you ever read a Bible passage that spoke so directly to you that it went straight to your heart like an arrow?  That’s what happened to me 20 years ago when I first read this morning’s Old Testament story of Hannah and the birth of Samuel – or, as today’s Collect puts it, when I first began to hear, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest this section of Scripture.  I was 35 years old, newly married, and childless.  I badly wanted a child, but like a good number of women I was struggling with infertility.  During the long bout of medical treatments, I read with great interest the biblical stories of barren women who through the grace of God conceived and bore children late in life – Sarah, for instance, and Rebekah, Rachel, and Elizabeth.  But it was the story of Hannah that most captured my imagination.

Her story may not be familiar to you, since today’s reading is a new passage that we have been given because of our transition to the Revised Common Lectionary, so let’s take a moment to review it.  The first character we meet is Elkanah, who goes every year to worship in Shiloh, the city where the Ark of the Covenant and the tabernacle are kept.  Elkanah has two wives.  With one wife, Penninah, he has children, but the other wife, Hannah, is infertile.  Elkanah feels a special love for Hannah – he brings her a double portion of the sacrifice.  But the other wife, Penninah, is making Hannah’s life miserable, provoking and irritating her because she can’t bear a child, so that Hannah weeps and will not eat.  Elkanah tries to encourage Hannah, asking “Hannah, why do you weep?  Why do you not eat?… Am I not more to you than ten sons?” [1 Samuel 1:8].

But this doesn’t console her, and one day, “after they had eaten and drunk at Shiloh” [1 Samuel 1:9], Hannah goes to the temple and brings her suffering to God.  Weeping bitterly, she asks God for help and makes a vow: if God will give her a son, she will dedicate him to God’s service as a nazirite.  (Scholars don’t seem to know exactly what a nazirite is, except, as the story tells us, they don’t drink wine and don’t cut their hair.)

The priest, Eli, can see her distress, for she is weeping and moving her lips, but because she is praying in silence he misunderstands what is going on and accuses her of being drunk.  Hannah stands up for herself and tells him that she has been “pouring out [her] soul before the LORD” [1 Samuel 1:15], and Eli tells her to go in peace, assuring her that God will grant her request.

And so Hannah leaves the temple happy.  She believes him.  She believes that God will be faithful to her.  And sure enough, after Hannah and her husband worship one last time and return home, “the LORD remembered her” [1 Samuel 1:19], and before long she does conceive and bear a son, whom she  names Samuel.

When God grants you your heart’s desire, what can you do but sing?  And that’s what Hannah does, praising God in the Song of Hannah that we used this morning in place of a psalm: ‘My heart exults in the LORD; my strength is exalted in my God…There is no Holy One like the LORD, no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God” (1 Samuel 2: 1a, 2).  She praises the God of justice who has the power to cast down and raise up, the power to break the bows of the mighty and give strength to the feeble.  If the Song of Hannah sounds familiar, that is because it became the template for the Song of Mary, the Magnificat that Mary sings when she is pregnant with Jesus and praises God’s power to overthrow every expectation, to raise up the lowly and bring new life into the world [Luke 146-55; BCP pp. 91-92].

When I read Hannah’s story 20 years ago, I identified very literally with Hannah’s frustrated longing for a child.  I felt that I was sharing in her suffering and sorrow.  Like her, I didn’t feel that anyone, not even my beloved husband, could console me, and that the place to bring my grief was ultimately to God.  Like Hannah, I too made a vow: if God gave me a child, I would entrust that child to God – not that the child would be a nazirite, for I had no idea what a nazirite was – but in the sense that I would try not to cling to the child.  My child’s soul would belong not to me, but to God; the child would be a child of God, even more than he or she would be my own.

You can see why – after several years of infertility work came to nothing, after my husband and I decided to give up any further medical treatment and to relinquish our hope for a biological child – when I suddenly and almost miraculously conceived and bore a child, a son, we decided to name him Samuel. 

Twenty years later I come back to this story with a deep sense of gratefulness for how it carried me through a dark time and pointed me toward hope.  From Hannah I learned something about facing my pain and frustration, and bringing everything to God.  I learned something about persistence and passion, and about entrusting the outcome to God.  I learned about God’s power to bring forth life, though obviously it may not come in the way that we expect.  A Christian friend of mine who went through her own struggle with infertility recently decided to adopt a girl from China, and in gratitude for God’s power to bring new life, she named her daughter Hannah.

Now you may be sitting here thinking, “Well, fine, but this doesn’t relate to me since I have no interest in bearing or raising a child.”  But isn’t it true that in whatever stage of life we are, we sense deep within us a longing to bring forth life?  Psychologist Erik Erikson spoke of a middle-aged person’s drive toward generativity – the desire to encourage and support the younger generation and to pass on what we have learned – just as he spoke of an elderly person’s drive toward wisdom – the desire to look deeply into life, to make peace with one’s place in the big scheme of things.

Artists know the longing to let their creative powers be expressed.  A teacher standing in front of a classroom, wondering how to engage her students; a parent considering what to say to a cantankerous child; a doctor trying to diagnose and treat an illness; a consultant trying to untangle the dynamics of a dysfunctional workplace — each one knows the longing to say or do whatever will move the situation forward and create fresh possibilities so that new life can be born.

We are each like Hannah, standing before God and asking to be a channel for life, a vehicle through which God can tend and bless the world.   And we don’t bring just our personal longings — we also bring to God our longing for a renewal of the earth, a renewal of our human societies.  We ask for life to flow through us, so that through our own hands and words and deeds, new life can come into the world. 

For so many people these are such uncertain and anxious times.  Melting ice caps.  Erratic weather.  The prospect of peak oil and the eventual collapse of a petroleum-based economy.  The news that we have exceeded our planet’s carrying capacity, its ability to replenish the resources that are being used up. No wonder so many of us look to the future with some degree of dread.  Are we heading toward catastrophic climate change and social upheaval?

We want to turn things around.  We want to bring into being something new.  We want to stand up for life, to protect life, to bring new life to birth.  So, like Hannah, we stand before God in our helplessness and need, asking God to come with great power and to make a way where there is no way, to bring new life when maybe all we can see just now is only frustration or despair. 

Hannah didn’t know it, but when she finally brought her personal pain to God, she opened the path for God to change her country’s history. “The story of the birth of Samuel comes at a key turning point in the history of Israel.” (1) Samuel would be the last of the so-called “judges” – inspired leaders of Israel – and would move the nation out of a period of anarchy and chaos [cf. Judges 21:25] into a monarchy.  It was Samuel who anointed the first kings, Saul and then David.  Without Hannah’s persistence and passion, “there would have been no Samuel, and some other way would have had to be found to establish Israel and the monarchy.” (2)

We’re not looking for any monarchy, but many of us are hungering for new ways to organize communities, new ways to shape our economy so that is based on sustainable principles. Hannah’s story – and our Gospel passage, too – challenge us to live into these violent and uncertain times as if they are the inevitable pangs that accompany a birth.  They challenge us to live with the courage and endurance and patience and even the excitement that attend any birth.  That’s what Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel reading from Mark: “Do not be alarmed,” he tells us, when we “hear of wars and rumors of wars,” when nations rise up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there are earthquakes and famines.  “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs” [Mark 13: 7, 8].

God’s Spirit, God’s energy, is calling us to new life, and isn’t it true that even now something new is being born?  We see small signs of a new economic order and of people relating to each other in new ways. We see people supporting small, locally owned businesses and participating in community-supported agriculture.  We see people trying to live more simply, to waste less and to consume only what they need.  Even now, 6 weeks before Christmas, some people have decided to opt out of buying a bunch of stuff that will only end up in the landfill.  Right here at Grace Church we see small groups of people resisting the loneliness and alienation that seem to be part of this post-industrial society and starting up “pastorates,” gathering on occasional evenings in each other’s homes to pray and talk and build real friendships.

Signs like these are very small, but they are signs that something new is being born.  Of course we can always throw up our hands, say it’s too late to stop climate change – that we’re going to have to settle for a future of tribalism and fear, of extreme weather events and millions of refugees. 

But like Hannah, we turn to God in longing and in hope.  We want to bring new life into the world.  We want to create a world that is socially just and environmentally sound.  We want to pass on to our children the life that is here.  We want to be able to say to future generations: “Look! I give you polar bears.  I give you coral reefs.  I give you an intact ice sheet that is the size of a continent.  I give you seasons.  I give you moderate weather.” (3)

Like Hannah we want to say, ‘My heart exults in the LORD; my strength is exalted in my God…There is no Holy One like the LORD, no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God.”    (1 Samuel 2: 1a, 2)

  

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(1) Fred B. Craddock, John H. Hayes, et al., Preaching Through the Christian Year, Year B, Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, p. 467.

(2) Ibid, p. 469.

(3) Eban Goodstein of Green House Network used these images in October, 2006 in a talk at UMass Amherst about his new initiative, Focus the Nation.

 

“What God has joined together, let no one separate”

I had an aha! moment a week or two ago, just as the seasons changed and we began heading into fall.  I was eating supper with my husband on the porch of our home in Northampton, and as we sat there chatting about our day and digging into greens and raw vegetables that I’d picked up at the Food Bank Farm in Hadley, I had a sudden revelation.  It wasn’t a formal meal, so I had put down my fork and picked up a carrot in my fingers, and I was just about to take a bite when it suddenly came to me: this carrot had been planted, grown and harvested just a few miles from my house.  I felt a sudden sense of kinship with that carrot.  We were connected.  We’d lived through the same summer heat and the same summer downpours.  We’d felt the same wind blow across the valley, experienced the same warmth of the sun, the same cool of the clouds.  We were creatures together, this carrot and I: neighbors of a sort, some kind of kin.

I don’t suppose that human beings actually share very much DNA with a carrot, but in that sudden moment of illumination on the porch I realized that this carrot and I were creatures connected to the same soil, growing under the same sun, sprung from the divine Source.  

“Brother Carrot,” I might have called it, before I took a bite.

I know this is a rather fanciful way to start a sermon, but my story has a point: we human beings are on a long journey back to understanding our connections with the Earth.  “What God has joined together, let no one separate” (Mark 10:9). That’s the task before us, as I see it: how to find our way back to union with God and all God’s Creation, how to reclaim our partnership not just with our human fellows but also with all living creatures.  I savor every moment of ecological consciousness that is given to me, and to you, because every such moment is a moment of healing. 

All week we’ve been celebrating St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecology, whose Feast Day was on Wednesday and whose vision of God’s presence in the biophysical world we will honor again this afternoon at 4 o’clock in a service of blessing the animals.  Heaven knows that in many ways we human beings do not live in right relationship with the land and sea and sky, to say nothing of our relationship with our brothers and sisters who are four-legged, feathered or finned. 

I don’t think I need to belabor the point.  Some of you are fresh from seeing “An Inconvenient Truth,” when on Friday about 85 people packed the Parish Hall to watch the movie.  We are one of 4,000 congregations across the country that showed the film this week, as people of faith take hold of the urgent need to curb global warming. 

Even if you haven’t yet seen the movie, you may know that climate scientists reported at the end of September that the Earth may be close to the warmest it has been in the last million years (1).  At the end of the summer scientists also reported that Greenland’s ice sheet is melting much more quickly than they had anticipated, and that in a drastic and unprecedented thaw, this summer an area of Arctic sea ice that normally stays frozen all year briefly opened a channel that was “big enough to allow a ship to sail to the North Pole… Polar bears have drowned and receding Arctic glaciers are uncovering previously unknown islands.” (2) The effects of global warming are being felt not only in far off places but right here in our beloved Pioneer Valley.  Maybe you read the front-page news this week about the new study “projecting that the Northeastern climate will become like that of the deep South by the end of the century unless greenhouse gas emissions are lowered.” (3) 

We all know we’re living in an unsustainable way.  Depending on non-renewable energy and resources is by definition unsustainable.  Consuming more resources than the planet can provide is by definition unsustainable.  Producing a killing level of greenhouse gases is by definition unsustainable.

So what are we to do?  As Christians, one thing we do is dive into Scripture and tradition, looking for wisdom as we struggle to articulate what a religious environmental worldview might look like.  We read familiar texts with a new ecological eye, pressing them to deal with questions that human beings have never faced before. 

Today’s reading from Genesis is a good case in point.  It’s a section of the mythic story of our creation, and the first time I read it through in preparation for this sermon, all I could see was a justification for human alienation from nature.  I interpreted it like this: God says, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner” (Gen 2:18).  OK, fine, but God apparently creates animals only to relieve human loneliness.  In other words, man is supreme and is created first, and animals exist only to serve his purposes and needs.  God then trots the animals out to the man, who slaps a name on each one – cow, bird, crocodile, whatever – as a way of expressing his dominance and control — there is power in assigning a name.  The animals prove to be inadequate companions for the man, so God decides to create woman. 

The moral?  Well, I decided, this text could be read as a Judeo-Christian rationalization for human dominance and exploitation of the natural world.  Taken alongside Psalm 8, with its lines “You give him mastery over the works of your hands; you put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen, even the wild beasts of the field, The birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and whatsoever walks in the paths of the sea” (Ps 8:7-9) – well, I thought, now there’s a mandate for plundering and spoiling the natural world.

But we can’t settle for interpretations like that – they’re not adequate today, if they ever were.  I went back to the Genesis text and considered a different way to read the story.  God says, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.”  OK, I thought. Humanity is built for relationship.  We can’t exist by ourselves or for ourselves alone. God has created us to seek connection. 

Out of the ground God then forms “every animal of the field and every bird of the air”  (Gen 2:19).  You may remember that in an earlier verse Adam himself was formed “from the dust of the ground” (Gen 2:7).  It’s as if the storyteller wants to show that humans and non-human creatures are intrinsically linked, because we spring from the same soil.  We’re made from the same stuff.

Then God brings the animals to the man “to see what he would call them.”  Clearly human beings have a special role in God’s creation, but is it one of domination and exploitation?  Naming a living creature, or discovering the name that it’s already been given, requires care and curiosity, not high-handed authority. From this perspective I imagine Adam contemplating each God-given creature one by one, and taking time to get to know and interact with it before deciding on its name.  How can you know the name of one plant or another, or distinguish one bird from another, until you’ve looked at it closely? 

Last week a naturalist took my husband and me on a walk around our land in Ashfield, teaching us how to identify wild edibles and healing plants.  Unlike many of you, I am clueless when it comes to naming trees and birds and mosses and plants, so I had to work pretty hard.  She had us comparing the edges of leaves, to see if they were wavy or rounded or sharp.  She had us squatting to examine mushrooms, and scraping birch bark to catch the root beer scent, and peering through a magnifying lens to study the patterns of veins on a plant and the spores on the underside of ferns.  She had us look and smell and touch so that we could notice the difference between one plant and another, and perhaps begin to remember its name.  As we walked out of the woods at the end of the afternoon, she remarked, “If you don’t remember the names, never mind: now you know how to look.”

So I like to imagine that Adam’s naming of the creatures had something of the same gentle, inquisitive, appreciative spirit that I saw in her.  I like to think that he knew how to look – that his naming of the animals was a sign of his willingness to abide with them and learn from them.  The best words for anything come only after we’ve experienced it deeply, not before.

And when Adam finally finds his partner, bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh, their shared task as human beings is to “to till and keep” (Gen 2:15) the Earth – that is, to exercise a “mastery” or dominion over non-human creatures that is marked by benevolence, not exploitation.  Some theologians define dominion not as domination but as “the mediation of divine blessings to nonhuman creatures.” (4) That’s our vocation, that’s our job – to mediate divine blessings to nonhuman creatures.  Imagine!

In a time of planetary crisis, we need to reclaim an ecological consciousness, to perceive and celebrate the sacredness of all Creation.  You may or may not be drawn to nature mysticism, and I’m sure that some people think it impossibly sentimental or eccentric to imagine speaking, as St. Francis did, of Brother Wolf, Brother Sun, or Sister Moon – to say nothing of feeling any kinship with a carrot!

But I would argue that one of the most urgent tasks of our generation is to move from a spirituality of alienation from the natural world to one of intimacy with it.  And we don’t have much time- for instance, some experts say that we have about a decade in which to avert – or not – the most catastrophic level of climate change.

The good news is that there are many things we can do right away, as you will see if you come for coffee hour in the Parish Hall and take a look at our little eco-fair.  We hope you’ll stock up on compact fluorescent light bulbs, which save both energy and money, and get off junk mail lists, since junk mail gobbles up the equivalent of 100 million trees every year. (5)

Like many of you, I’m trying to make changes at home.  A few weeks ago I set up a composter in the back yard and I’m figuring out that whole business of when to put in leaves, when to throw in food.  We’ve been driving a hybrid car for a while, we became members of Co-op Power, and soon we’ll set up photovoltaic panels to heat our hot water and produce some electricity. We’re trying to turn off unnecessary lights, and next week we’re getting a home energy audit.

 Personal actions are important, but participating in regional and national initiatives may count for even more.  Here in the Pioneer Valley we have a unique opportunity this month to participate in a public planning process to create a regional Clean Energy Plan.  During the month of October, all citizens of Franklin, Hampden, and Hampshire Counties are invited to join an online conversation that will help us set goals and develop action plans for how to increase our energy efficiencies and how to generate more clean, renewable energy right here in the Valley.  At the eco-fair we’ll have little cards like this one that will show you where to sign on. (6)

I’m also excited about two other initiatives.  Focus the Nation is a project to create a national dialogue about stabilizing the climate that will culminate on January 31, 2008, when teach-ins will be held simultaneously across the country.  Inspired by Earth Day 1970, this event will be held early in the presidential primary season. (7) Focus the Nation could help generate the political will to make our national government freeze carbon emissions and take the lead in curbing global warming.  I’m hoping that Grace Church will want to be a part of this effort.

I’m happy to tell you that Grace Church has already signed on to be a co-sponsor of another event: a global warming walk I’m helping to organize that will head from Northampton to Boston next spring.  The Interfaith Walk for Climate Rescue will begin in Northampton on March 16, and end in Boston on March 24, with an interfaith prayer service and rally. (8) You can walk for an hour, a day, or a week.  We’ll sing, we’ll pray, we’ll walk in silence, and we’ll bear witness to our commitment to the God “for whom and through whom all things exist” (Hebrews 2:10) and who connects us one with another and with the whole Creation. 

What God has joined together, let no one separate. 

And when I see you on November 4 at Grace Church’s Hundred-Mile Meal and we share a potluck feast of local foods, I’ll be the person bringing a pot of carrot soup.

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(1) “Earth May Be at Warmest Point in One Million Years,” by Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters, September 26, 2006.

(2) “Thaw and Storms Opened Channel to North Pole,” by Francois Murphy, Reuters, September 21, 2006.

(3) “Heading South? Reports: N.E. faces big climate changes,” by Richie Davis, The Recorder, Daily Hampshire Gazette, October 5, 2006, p. 1.

You can visit the Union of Concerned Scientists’ new, interactive website to review findings from the new report by independent scientists and researchers on climate change in the Northeast and to consider how the choices we make today will determine our children’s and grandchildren’s future.

(4) 18^th century theologian John Wesley is one example cited by James A. Nash in Loving Nature: Ecological Integrity and Christian Responsibility, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991, p. 103.

(5) New American Dream calculation from Conservatree and U.S. Forest Service statistics.

(6) Sign up at: http://forums.e-democracy.org/pioneer-valley.

(7) For information and to sign up your school, college, church, or business, visit http://focusthenation.org .

(8) For information or to volunteer, contact Mathilda Cantwell, (413) 534-6488, email: walk@religiouswitness.org . 

Feasting on God

A few weeks ago a reporter from the Daily Hampshire Gazette invited me to be the subject of the newspaper’s weekly column “Hampshire I.D.”  Along with questions such as asking you to describe your funniest memory or your strangest job, the column asks you to name your favorite movie. As you might expect, I felt honor-bound to list An Inconvenient Truth because of its urgent message about global warming, but I also decided to mention a movie that has lingered in my mind since its release almost 20 years ago: Babette’s Feast.  Maybe you remember it.  Based on a short story by Isak Dineson, the film tells the story of a superb French chef who moves to a village on the desolate coast of Denmark and begins an anonymous, humble life as housekeeper and cook for two elderly, pious women.  For a long time Babette cooks nothing more exciting than boiled codfish and ale-bread soup, but one day she wins the French lottery and decides to spend every last franc on creating the most memorable, delectable, mouth-watering feast that anyone has ever consumed, even though her guests – the simple villagers – will have no idea what they are eating. 

Part of the pleasure of the movie comes in watching how the abundance flowing out of the kitchen transforms the rigid, anxious villagers.  As the guests feast at this banquet table of endless bounty, their feuds and quarrels are healed and their sins forgiven.  The wine flows freely, one delectable dish after another is presented and consumed, and gradually the guests’ mutual rancor turns into friendship, and their melancholy into joy.  When the feast is over, the guests walk out into the village square and there, under a starlit sky, they spontaneously join hands in a circle and dance.  Their happiness is complete.

The Hampshire Gazette never asked why I enjoy “Babette’s Feast” so much, but I will tell you: it is a story about the power of the Eucharist, and Babette is a figure of Christ.  Like him, she arrives mysteriously among her community, she takes the humble role of a servant, and then she gives away everything she has to provide a banquet that fills the deepest longings of the human heart. (1) As in the Eucharist, her feast transforms everyone who shares in it. The banquet’s food expresses the overflowing mercy of God, and in the course of this marvelous meal, everybody’s fear, hostility, and shame melt away.  The guests awaken to what we might call a higher consciousness or a deeper level of awareness: they discover that the ordinary things of this world – bread, wine, figs, a platter of meat, and – most wondrous of all – even each other, even themselves – are signs of the presence and mercy of God.  For them, ordinary reality – what we see and smell, what we touch and taste and hear – has become sacramental, all lit up with holiness.  What else can they do after such a meal than walk out under the stars, join hands, and dance?

Babette’s Feast comes to mind, of course, because of today’s Gospel passage from the sixth chapter of John, the last section of Jesus’ discourse on the bread of life.  In the very stark, even shocking, words that we just heard, Jesus invites his friends to share in the Eucharistic feast: “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink” [John 6:53-54].

This is a very emphatic invitation to the Eucharist, but I have to say that these words may sound repugnant to us – as primitive and brutal as an invitation to cannibalism.  We may flinch when we hear them, for why would anyone want to eat a person’s flesh or to drink his blood?  If it’s any consolation, these words shocked Jesus’ listeners, too, and in the verse immediately following the passage that we heard this morning, many of the disciples reportedly say, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” [John 6:60].  Commentators point out that “if the idea of eating a man’s flesh would [be] repugnant to a Jewish audience, the idea of drinking blood would be even more so, because blood as food was forbidden under the Law.” (2)

One obvious thing to say about this passage is that Jesus does not mean the words in a literal sense. “Just as Nicodemus thought of rebirth in a purely physical sense [John 3:4] and as the woman at the well first thought of only natural water [John 4:11],” (3) so we too would be mistaken if we took the reference to Jesus’ flesh literally.  But in acknowledging that, I don’t want in any way to blunt the energy behind Jesus’ words and their insistent vigor and clarity: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them” [John 6:56].  In a way that words can never adequately express, Jesus is giving himself to us fully in the Eucharistic bread and wine. 

Maybe Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is something like the image that caught my eye this week as I stood at the checkout lane of Whole Foods.  One of those health-oriented, granola-crunch magazines had a peaceful cover photo of a mother nursing her baby.  Mother and baby were gazing steadily into each other’s eyes, and the baby was cradling its palm against the mother’s cheek.  Clearly the baby was not just taking in physical nourishment from the mother’s body; it was also drinking in her presence and the love that was shining from her eyes and smiling face.  Mother and baby were caught up in a love that embraced them both.

 That may seem an unorthodox, even irreverent image for what is going on at the Eucharist, but I am not the first Christian to have considered it.  Back in the 2^nd century, Clement of Alexandria compared God to a nursing mother and wrote of “the Father’s loving breasts” and of “the milk of the Father.”   In the 14^th century, the female mystic Julian of Norwich similarly spoke of Jesus as “our true Mother” from whose breasts we drink.  Again, this is metaphorical language for God, who is no more male than female, masculine than feminine.  We grope to put into words the intimacy of our union in Christ with the divine.

I think that some part of us does come to the Eucharist with the helplessness of a baby, knowing that we cannot feed ourselves with the bread of life, and that God alone can nourish our deepest hunger.  This is not to say that the Eucharist infantilizes us, for our task is to grow up in Christ.  Sometimes when we come to the Eucharist, it is our warrior self that needs to be fed, the part of us that takes initiative and takes a stand.  It’s all about growing into our maturity in Christ.  As Paul puts it, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways” [1 Corinthians 13:11] – or, as we heard in today’s admonition from the book of Proverbs, “Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight” [Proverbs 9:6].  But maybe it is only in the presence of the unwavering love of God in Christ – as steadfast and tender as a mother’s love – that our basic loneliness and narcissism can finally be healed and that human beings can grow up into the cognitive and spiritual maturity that we must attain if we are to heal our planet.

This week I have been reading again some of the work of Joanna Macy, the Buddhist teacher and deep ecologist who speaks and writes so eloquently about the social and ecological crises of our time.  Macy leads workshops around the world that explore what she calls the Great Turning, the transition from the industrial growth society to a life-giving society, the shift from a path of folly, a path, as she puts it, in which economic success is measured “by how fast materials can be extracted from Earth and turned into consumer products, weapons, and waste,” (4) to a path of wisdom, the path that moves us toward living in harmony with the Earth and with each other, and the only way of life that can endure for the future.  The Great Turning – the shift to a socially and environmentally sustainable way of life – is, she says, “the essential adventure of our time.” (5)

So this morning I think of Joanna Macy’s concept of the Great Turning when I hear in Proverbs that Wisdom is inviting us to visit her house and to sit at her table and to walk in the way of insight, not of folly, or when I hear the injunction in the passage from Ephesians, “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time” [Ephesians 5:15]. 

And when it comes to the adventure ahead, I consider the Eucharist our greatest spiritual resource. 

Why? Three reasons.

First, the Eucharist teaches us to live with gratitude – the very word “Eucharist” itself means “thanksgiving.” Gratitude is the wellspring of all religions and one of the shortest paths to intimacy with God.  It is when we are grateful that we are most fully alive, and in the Eucharist we begin to learn, as we heard in today’s second reading, how to “[give] thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” [Ephesians 5:20].

Second, the Eucharist teaches us reverence not only for the consecrated bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ, but for the whole creation. Wendell Berry, the poet and farmer, put it this way: “To live we must daily break the body and shed the blood of creation.  When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully and reverently it is a sacrament.  When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily and destructively it is a desecration.” (6) Through the Eucharist, we learn to treat the whole creation with reverence and with restraint.

And third, the Eucharist teaches us to celebrate, to keep our vision alive even in the darkest times, to trust that new life can be born even in the midst of what looks like loss and failure.  “Praise the Lord, rise up rejoicing” – that’s what we will sing before we share Eucharist this morning and celebrate Christ’s victory over death.

A life of gratitude, of reverence, and of celebration – there are worse ways to live, and no better way I can think of to face into the challenges that are set before us.  In the joy of living such a life and of being sustained and fed by the one who comes to us in the bread and the wine, perhaps, like the villagers in Babette’s Feast, we too will find ourselves wanting to take hold of each other’s hands and to go outside and dance under the stars.

 

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(1) Drawn from “Babette’s Feast: A Religious Film,” by Wendy M. Wright, Journal of Religion and Film, Vol. 1, No. 2, October, 1997, Section #22, posted at http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/BabetteWW.htm

(2) The Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. Raymond E. Brown et al (Prentice-Hall, Inc.: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1968), Vol. 2, p. 438.

(3) Ibid, p. 437.

(4) Joanna Macy, “The Shift to a Life-sustaining Civilization,” http://www.joannamacy.net/html/great.html#wheel

(5) Ibid.

(6) Wendell Berry, The Gift of Good Land, quoted by Sean McDonagh, To Care for the Earth: A Call to a New Theology (Santa Fe, NM: Bear & Company, 1986), p. 130.

“Open Your Hand”

I’d like to say a few words about generosity.  It’s a topic that made headlines this week when Warren E. Buffett announced that he would give 31 billion dollars to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to support the foundation’s effort to find cures for the world’s 20 leading fatal diseases — including a vaccine for HIV/AIDS — and to ensure that every American has a chance at a decent education.  I’ve been trying to imagine what it might be like to have $31 billion – to experience that sense of fullness, wealth, abundance, and plenty – and then to give the money away so that it could go to work in the world to heal the sick and to bring life and hope to the poorest of the poor.  I don’t know what Warren Buffett has been feeling this week but what I want to imagine he’s feeling is joy.  I imagine him sensing a fresh sense of connection with the poor – and actually with the whole human race – for he has stepped beyond the bounds of his own small self, past that tendency to hoard and hold back and look out for Number 1, and has opened his hands to share himself and his possessions with those in need. 

As far as I know it’s unlikely that any of us in this room has had – or ever will have — $31 billion to give away.  But generosity is a powerful energy and it seems increasingly clear to me that one of the best ways to navigate these turbulent times, when so many people are so justifiably anxious about so many things, is to cultivate a spirit of generosity within ourselves, our community, and in our country as a whole.

Generosity is obviously a basic value of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and it runs like a thread through three of today’s four readings.  The passage from Deuteronomy is an extended meditation on the importance of giving generously to the poor. “If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor.  You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need… Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so… Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.” 

The psalm picks up the theme, declaring that “Light shines in the darkness for the upright; the righteous are merciful and full of compassion.  It is good for them to be generous in lending and to manage their affairs with justice… They have given freely to the poor, and their righteousness stands fast for ever; they will hold up their head with honor” [Psalm 112:4-5, 9]. 

The whole eighth chapter of Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians is an appeal to be generous to the church in Jerusalem, and in the excerpt that we heard this morning, Paul praises the churches of Macedonia for their exemplary generosity. “…During a severe ordeal of affliction, their abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity.  For, as I can testify, they voluntarily gave according to their means, and even beyond their means” [2 Cor 8:2-3].  Paul goes on to say, “I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance” [2 Cor 8:13-14].  And then Paul remembers from the Book of Exodus how God provided just the right amount of manna every day to feed the people in the wilderness, and he adds, “As it is written, ‘The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little'” [2 Cor 8:15].

I’d like to say 3 things about generosity. 

1) True generosity begins with God.  Even if we’ve worked very hard for every penny we own, everything we have – everything that is – is ultimately a gift from God: this breath, this moment in time and whatever moments we have until we die, our capacity to think and feel and remember and hope, the family and friends we’ve been given to love, the whole living breathing planet with its goldfinches and cougars, its foxes and salmon and birch trees – all of it is gift.

The generosity of the Creator flows into the generosity of the Redeemer, who in the act of self-emptying that we call the Incarnation, came down from heaven to become one of us, and gave himself to us on the cross so that we might share in his divine life.  Here is how Paul puts it in today’s reading from 2 Corinthians: “…You know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich [that is, equal to God], yet for your sakes he became poor [that is, human], so that by his poverty you might become rich” [2 Cor 8:9].

God is infinitely generous, and acts of Christian generosity spring from the grateful awareness of how much we’ve been given.  At the same time, remembering the generosity of God can be a wonderful antidote to compulsive giving, the temptation to think that we have to give and give and give without asking for anything in return.  As Henri Nouwen pointed out, “We may think that this is a sign of generosity or even heroism.  But it might be little else than a proud attitude that says: ‘I don’t need help from others. I only want to give.'” (1) Knowing that generosity begins with God gives us grateful hearts and the humility to recognize that yes, we too, need to receive.  Giving without receiving is like breathing out without breathing in.  We won’t last long.

So that’s the first point: true generosity begins with God. 

Here’s the second.  

2) Authentic generosity expresses kinship.  The root of the word “generosity” is the Latin word “genus,” which means “race, kind, or kin.”  To be generous is to make others kin.  This is a very different notion of generosity than what we might call patronage or noblesse oblige, in which a powerful person or group of people deigns to share a little of its abundance with the poor and dispossessed but does not experience, or want to experience, any direct contact with the poor.  Giving in this spirit can actually function as a power play, in which the rich congratulate themselves on their supposed generosity, while the poor remain dependent and disempowered. 

True generosity, it seems to me, expresses kinship.  It recognizes that rich and poor alike are the beloved children of God, equally human and equally worthy of respect.  Human societies tend to concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a few and to relegate the poor to the margins, but a religious vision of our kinship with one another calls us to a generosity that inspires us to struggle for social and economic justice and not to settle for giving charity and handouts.  And if generosity is all about kinship, maybe in this time of ecological devastation we’re ready to expand our notions of kin to include not just our two-legged relatives but also the four-legged kind, those with fins and those with wings.

Here on the brink the Fourth of July, I want to lift up some of the new social movements that are calling our country back to a vision of mutual generosity and interconnectedness.  I think, for instance, of Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners, a Christian progressive community in Washington, who just a few days ago launched what he calls “A Covenant for a New America,” whose goal is to overcome poverty with religious commitment and political leadership.

As Jim Wallis puts is, “Poverty is not a family value! …If the gospel that we preach does not ‘bring good news to the poor,’ well then, it is simply not the gospel of Jesus Christ – and it is about time that we said that.” [www.sojo.net]

I think, also, of Rabbi Michael Lerner, founding editor-publisher of the liberal interfaith magazine Tikkun, who is forming a national interfaith initiative, The Network of Spiritual Progressives, whose goal, among other things, is to create a New Bottom Line for American society. The Old Bottom Line in this country, says The Network of Spiritual Progressives, is materialism and selfishness.  The New Bottom Line that the Network wants to be build is “love, caring, generosity, kindness, ethical and ecological sensitivity, and awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation.”  No small vision there!

And here’s my last point:

3) Generosity may be one of the key spiritual practices that can keep us sane and connected with Spirit in a time of turbulence and anxiety.  Generosity has the power to ward off despair.  I remember the response of some of you who came with me on Wednesday – almost 50 of you! – to watch Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth.”  Many of us were shaken by the powerful images of melting glaciers and drowning polar bears, of disrupted seasonal cycles and intensifying droughts and storms.  Is it too late to save the precious web of life that our species is so wantonly destroying? As Al Gore pointed out, when it comes to the ecological catastrophe already upon us, it can be easy to move directly from denial to despair.

I wonder if generosity is a practice that can guide our actions and help heal that despair.  Skipping one car trip a week can be an act of generosity.  So can deciding to walk or carpool or to ride a bike.  Buying locally grown food can be an act of generosity, since the average bite of food travels something like a thousand miles – releasing who knows how many pounds of carbon along the way – before it reaches our lips.  Replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents can be an act of generosity, as can reducing the use of our clothes dryer or air conditioner.

I do not know whether our individual and corporate acts of generosity will be enough to stop the most catastrophic effects of climate change, but I do know that when we are generous, we become a living sign of hope.  When despair comes calling, I invite us to go back to point #1: true generosity begins with God.  And so we turn to God and notice the gifts of the moment.  We recall our belovedness to God in Christ and the power of the cross and resurrection.  We let ourselves fill up again with the presence of the Holy Spirit and discover within ourselves an interior abundance and sense of plenty.  What God has given each one of us is much more precious than billions of dollars!

We can also remember point #2: generosity expresses kinship, our connection to each other and to all beings.  We are not alone. 

Our gratefulness to God and our awareness of connection to all beings can help us re-connect with the flow of divine love.  Generosity becomes possible again.  And with every act of generosity, a little more love becomes visible in the world.

I am no easy optimist when it comes to solving climate change or any of the other daunting issues that beset us, but I do put my trust in the creative, redeeming, and sustaining love of God.  In the words of the American poet, W.S. Merwin, “On the last day of the world I would want to plant a tree.”

 

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(1) Henri Nouwen, Bread for The Journey (HarperCollins, 1997)