Sermon: Create in us clean hearts, forgiven and forgiving

Lent 5B

March 22, 2015

Jeremiah 31:31-34

            I have many wonderful memories of my grandparents – some are actual memories, some are memories of things I have been told about them, making them giants in my mind. But one of my favorite memories of my grandma June is a simple one from just a few years before she finally succumbed to Alzheimer’s Disease. We have a family tradition during Advent of candle-lighting, where we take turns lighting candles all around the living room, sharing memories or reflections on the season and singing carols. At this point, my grandparents were still living independently, but my grandma was already showing strongly some the effects of Alzheimer’s – she called people by the

My pretty grandma and me (circa 2007)

wrong names, she couldn’t follow a conversation, stuff like that, but she was still aware enough to realize she was doing it wrong. It was clearly very frustrating for this brilliant, talented, articulate woman. That night of candle-lighting, I remember her standing before us in the darkened living room, her face lit only by a few candles and the burning wick she was holding, and she said to us, “I don’t always remember people, but I remember how to love.”

            What more was there to say? As that nasty disease slowly took from us this bright woman, she forgot the particular details of life – who said what when, who is related to whom – but the last thing to go for her was her ability to be in relationship, her ability to love, presumably because it was also the very first thing she ever learned. Oh, that we could all forget the dirty details of life and remember only to love one another!

            “I will be their God, and they shall be my people…They shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sins no more.” These powerful words are from our reading this morning from Jeremiah. The Bible, our story of faith, is full of good news, but to me, this is some of the best: that God desires a relationship with us so much that God not only forgives us our sins, but actually “remembers [them] no more.” God forgets our sins – can you imagine?

            What is so profound about this revelation is that it shows us that our God is a God of relationship, who will do (and has done) anything and everything to maintain a relationship with us. This little gem from Jeremiah is all the more poignant because of its larger context. Those of you who know your Bible know that the vast majority of the book of Jeremiah is doom and gloom, recalling

Jeremiah, by Michelangelo

all the ways that Israel has fallen short of their covenant with God. God has tried so many ways to reach the Israelites, but all they do is turn away, and Jeremiah is full of fear about that. But here, in chapters 30-33, we have what is known among scholars as the Book of Consolation: a brief respite from the doom and gloom to express instead God’s abiding love for us, and God’s promise to restore Israel. And this restoration begins with God forgetting our sins, and remembering only to love and be in relationship with us. In other words, it begins with forgiveness.

            Forgiveness is a topic that is consistently intriguing to me. It is a fairly common, well-known word, but I think so many of us have no idea what it entails. We have a vague sense from our liturgy that, at least where God is concerned, it involves first confessing our sins and wrong-doings, which is followed by the assurance of pardon from a God who continues to go to all lengths to love us. But this reality is hard to translate into forgiveness between people. With God, you see, I always know I’ll be forgiven. But actually being humble enough before another person to admit that I did something wrong, something that hurt them, and then not necessarily being assured of their forgiveness, is just not easy. It requires so much self-awareness, so much humility, so much vulnerability, and as much as we may like to restore our relationships with people in our lives, all that is quite a cost. It is often easier just to hold a grudge and maintain that I was right and you were wrong. Of course, if you have experienced this, you also know that it is terribly hard to truly love someone when holding the grudge is your mode of operation.

            But if we are called to be godly people, created in the image of God, then isn’t true forgiveness that restores relationship something to strive for? How do we do it? I read a wonderful article a while back called, “A Better Way to Say I’mSorry,” about teaching kids how to apologize, but the material is gold, even for adults. It describes a four-step apology, in which you first apologize for the specific thing you did to hurt someone (so not, “I was mean,” but, “I said this specific thing that hurt you”), then articulate why it was wrong (that is, how specifically it hurt the other person), then express your hope for how you will behave better in the future (as in, a positive action you will do in the hurtful one’s place), and finally asking for forgiveness. So instead of, “I’m sorry I was mean because I got in trouble. I won’t do it again,” the correct way to apologize would be, “I’m sorry that I

said no one wants to be your friend. That was wrong because it hurt your feelings and made you feel bad about yourself. In the future, I will keep such unkind words to myself. Will you forgive me?” It’s hard (I’ve tried it!), but it is a beautiful process because it reflects that the offender has made an effort to truly understand the other person’s feelings and needs, and has had to articulate aloud what was done that was hurtful. Being heard, and an effort at understanding – that is what allows relationships to be restored, and grudges to be forgotten. That is what allows true forgiveness to happen. That is what allows us to remember how to love one another.

            I understand that some types of forgiveness are too big or complicated for this model. It would be difficult to use this on someone with whom you didn’t have a loving relationship to begin with, for example, or someone you don’t even know but who, nonetheless, hurt you deeply. Perhaps it is those instances, especially, that make it so hard some days to pray that petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” I’m interested in God forgetting my sins – as I said, to me that is some of the best news in the whole Bible – but there are some other especially heinous sins that other people do that I don’t want God ever to forget, because I will never forget them, and I want God to be on my side.

            But there again is the good, though difficult, news: what we can’t do, God does. We struggle to forget the sins of others that have hurt us so, that have destroyed relationships, that have left us

broken. But God forgets. God puts, above all else, the promise to love us and be in relationship with us, even when we fall short, even when others fall short, even when we hurt others. God forgets our sins, and remembers always how to love.

            For our closing prayer today, I want you to try this exercise with me. First, think about something you have done that hurt someone else, something you wish God would forget. It can be big or small, it doesn’t matter. Imagine actually holding it in your hand. In the other hand, imagine holding something that you wish you could forget, some way that someone else has hurt you. As you hold those two things, I will read this passage again from Jeremiah, and while I read, imagine God forgetting that first thing – as indeed, God already has. As for the other thing, this one we will hold in prayer. So, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us pray…

            “This is the new covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”

            Gracious and merciful God, every day we encounter brokenness in the world, and the destruction of loving relationships. But you promise to forget our sins and that in all things, you shall be our God. Create in us clean hearts that are ready and willing to forgive others, so that we might be ruled not by the brokenness that pervades our world, but by the love that guides yours. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. 

Sermon: Create in me a heart that is free (Mar. 15, 2015)

Lent 4B

March 15, 2015

Numbers 21:4-9

John 3:14-21

            Our reading today from John’s Gospel includes what is probably the most famous verse in all of Scripture. If you have one verse memorized, this is the one. We see it painted on people’s faces at football games, written on poster board on the Today Show, and I even noticed once that such unlikely clothing stores as Forever 21 have the verse printed on the bottom of their bags. You know the one I’m talking about – say it with me: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life.

            Yes, almost all of us know it, or at least have heard it. And yet, did you know that the verse immediately preceding it refers to one of the strangest stories in all the Bible? “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes him may have eternal life.” It is a reference, of course, to the bizarre story we heard today in our Old Testament reading. The Israelites are wandering in the wilderness in search of the Promised land (as you may remember, they wandered a whopping 40 years before they found it), and although God has provided for them everything they need – bread that literally rains from heaven, quail to satisfy their protein needs, and even water flowing from a rock – they are not happy campers. They whine and complain and grumble, and remember back to the good ol’ days when they were slaves in Egypt, but at least they had more variety in their diet. Like angsty teenagers, they complain against God and against Moses, “What, have you brought us out here to die? Our lives were so much better before! We hate this miserable food!” (Wahh wahh wahh.)

And so like any loving parent, God responds by sending them… wait, poisonous snakes?! And they bite the Israelites and many die! Well, the punishment worked (though, parents, I don’t recommend this as a parenting strategy!), and the Israelites admit to Moses that maybe they were being a little dramatic before, and would Moses please ask God to stop with the snakes already? Moses does, but God doesn’t take away the snakes. Instead, God suggests the very reasonable

approach of putting a snake up on a pole where everyone can see it. Then, if someone gets bit, they should simply look at the snake lifted high, and they would be healed. Makes perfect sense, right? This all-powerful God, rather than simply taking away the thing that is causing the problem (which, by the way, God brought upon them in the first place), says that making people literally face their fear and the cause of their pain, glorified and lifted high, will heal them and bring them life.

Weird story, right? And no, I don’t think I have ever seen someone with John 3:14 painted on their face at a football game. And yet, it is this bizarre story that John uses to set up what many of us have come to see as the very heart of the gospel: that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. Obviously, John’s choice to put those stories side-by-side was intentional, so let’s try to figure out why.

First of all, I think it is very significant that God’s idea for the Israelites is to have them face head on the very thing they fear the most, and that is what will give them life and healing. Strange as it may sound, it is not so different from our experience. Take my husband Michael, for instance. In a time in his life when he was trying to make himself over, so to speak, and become the person he really wanted to be, he decided he needed to face his fears. Like everyone, he had many fears, some more concrete than others, but he decided to start with one of his more concrete fears, which was, coincidentally enough, a fear of snakes. The things gave him the heebie-jeebies. So he went out of his way to touch a snake, two different times, so he could get over his fear. Now, he finds them fascinating creatures. Just this week in Florida we were looking at a picture where Michael’s step mom is holding a python and his dad is shooting the picture, and Michael said, “Oh, he’s cool!” I explained that Michael loves/hates snakes. He added, “They terrify me, and I think they’re awesome.”

That’s what can happen when we face our fears. We gain a healthy respect for it – after all, being afraid is often a mechanism to help us stay out of danger – even as we can gain an appreciation for it in our lives. Perhaps your fear is of romantic relationships, after too much heartbreak, but opening your heart once again may allow that broken-heartedness to be healed. Perhaps your fear is of failure, but then you actually do fail and find that the world didn’t end, and in fact, you learned something from the failed effort. Perhaps your fear is of loss, but then you experience it and you find that even in your loss, you gained love from unexpected places and people. So often, facing our fear, as the Israelites faced that snake up on a pole, may at first appear to cause pain, but when we can recognize God’s presence and purpose in it, even though the pain doesn’t always go away, the pain leads ultimately to healing.

But this story goes deeper than merely facing fears. In telling the Israelites to look at the snake, he is telling them to look at the very thing that is causing them pain and even death. It may have seemed to them that this was the snakes who were biting them. But a closer look reveals that the cause of pain was something else altogether. Think: what were the snakes doing there in the first place? Well, God had sent them because the Israelites were complaining and not trusting God. So the snakes represented their lack of trust, their fear, and their self-serving behavior, all in one. That was what they were confronting when they looked up at that snake on a pole. That is what they needed release from.

            This past week in our midweek gathering, we learned about the Sabbath. One of the things our presenter talked about that really resonated with me was how Sabbath was commanded to be a

relief from slavery. It was about freedom. When they received the 10 Commandments, the Israelites had just come out of Egypt, where they were slaves and where the possibility of rest wasn’t even on their radar. For God to command a day a rest was a command for freedom, a command to be released from what had enslaved them for so many years.

            I wonder if God’s little ploy with the poisonous snakes might be something similar. Again and again throughout the Bible, ours is a God of life and freedom, and this story is no exception. God doesn’t take away the snakes, because if He did the people wouldn’t even remember that they had been enslaved to anything. Instead, God encourages them that, when they feel trapped by their fears and their pains, that they should look up, look those things in the face, and remember that in the midst of our pain, God offers us freedom from all that ails us.

            Of course in the Christian story, it is not a snake on a pole that we look to for freedom from all that ails us. But we do look to another thing that reminds us of sin and death: the cross. Yes, hope, life, and freedom come from looking to the cross, the very thing that has just convicted us, that shows us that it was our sins that put Jesus there. Just as God took the poisonous snake and transformed it

Resurrection cross

into an agent of healing and a way toward life, God took the ultimate sacrifice of His son, and the cruel, self-interested act of crucifixion, and turned it into a way toward freedom, “so that all who believed in him would not perish, but have eternal life.”

At the beginning of worship, we sang the well-known hymn, “Lift high the cross.” And so we shall, but when we sing that we also need to do it: to lift high this instrument of death, which represents our failings, our fears, and our sins, and to see it as our only way toward healing, life, and freedom from all that ails us. Lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaimed, ‘til all the world adore his sacred name.

Let us pray… God of freedom, we are enslaved to so many things. Create in us clean hearts, which are courageous enough to look at our fears, pains, and sins, indeed to look at the cross, and to see in this instrument of death a way toward freedom from what enslaves and eternal life. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Still a grace-filled daughter

Michael and I were in Florida this week visiting his dad, and while I was there I committed to spending some sabbath time in prayer overlooking the ocean from the balcony of the 7th story condo we were staying in. (It was really a burden to do this, as I'm sure you can imagine.) To aid me with this, I brought along the prayer journal I made last year for our Lenten series on prayer. I had only a couple of entries in there, so there was plenty of room for new prayers!

Funny enough, I had made my first entry one year and one day before I sat down with it again this week. Out of interest, I re-read my first entry in the journal. It was a part of the workshop we were doing on Ignatian spirituality. The presenter (my spiritual director) had given us a list of nouns, adjectives and verbs that describe us, God, and our relationship with God, and we were invited to pick and choose which ones best fit us at that moment to come up with a one-sentence prayer we could reflect on during a 15 minute period.

I was surprised and delighted by what I came up with:

Generous Giver of Life,

Your grace-filled daughter

hopes for joy.

Why so surprised? After all, that's exactly where I would have expected myself to be a year ago, just about to finish cancer surgeries. And that is where I was: content to almost be done, and grateful for the new life I had been given through treatment, but not yet completely over everything that had happened to me in the past year. I was still working on healing emotionally, working through everything that experience brought up in me, and while I was fairly at peace, and had gained some good perspective on things, I had not yet rediscovered joy.

But now, this little prayer spoke to me in a different way, as it is true for different reasons, so perfect it was as if this were some kind of prophecy.

"Generous Giver of Life." A year ago, the life that had been given or returned or both was my own, after two cancer scares. I was approaching earthly health and wholeness once again, with much gratitude. Today, the life I have been given by my generous God is the one growing in my womb - a miracle I can't seem to get over. Life is growing in me, where two years ago something grew in my body that could have brought death. Thank you, generous, life-giving God.

"Your grace-filled daughter." Not only am I full of a new life given to me and Michael by the grace of God, but if that life is a girl, a daughter, Michael and I have talked about naming her Grace, in which case I would, quite concretely, be filled with Grace. The reasons for considering that name are several. One is that it's a family name on both sides. But more significantly, at least for me, is that I feel like I/we are truly riding on a wave of God's grace. This is how we got through cancer, clinging even more closely to each other and feeling, much more strongly than anything else, God's enduring love. (How easy, how tempting it would have been to dwell on the wrath and unfairness of it all!) Here by the grace of God go I, and this pregnancy is such a testament to that. By no means have I felt entitled to it; it is given purely by grace, a grace by which I am constantly amazed.

"Hopes for joy." Here we have the humility that comes from recognition of the fragility of life. Of course, I want to believe that this will all be joy and sunshine, but I also know not to assume God's plan. Hope is trusting things unseen, and I do live in hope. I do hope for the joy I am anticipating. But in the end, I trust: trust God who has given me life time and time again, who has led and filled my life with grace in so many forms. Praise God, and may hope never disappoint us! Amen.

Weepy bag of hormones and the power of the church

I think I got off pretty easy hormone-wise during my first trimester. In general, I'm someone who gets sentimental, but am generally able to control my emotions and keep them in check.

But I feel like 2nd trimester hormones have gone into overdrive.

Like, when I learned about a silicone baby bottle that is shaped like a breast, with the intention of simulating breast feeding, and thus teaching nursing babies to bottle feed. I was talking to the lady at the store on the phone and had to take a moment to gather myself about the boob-shaped bottle made of the same material my breasts are made of.

Or yesterday: I was doing some research on The Honest Company, which I’d heard of but not looked much into. I read much of the website with a lump in my throat, grateful to have found a company that seems to get that, although breast is best, some parents don’t have that option, so here are some good options for other choices. Dr. Alan Greene was mentioned several times, so I finally looked up his book, Feeding Baby Green, and read some of the reviews, and one pointed out that a few reviewers had been disappointed that he hadn’t pushed breast feeding harder, but this reviewer actually admired that because he recognized that some parents didn’t have that option, like Dr. Greene’s own wife, who had breast cancer. And I lost it. Tears, streaming down my face, quietly weeping. And of course I ordered the book. I was grateful to read in the reviews online about people’s dismay that he seemed to give just as much attention to formula feeding as to breast feeding. And I - along with all the adoptive parents, the gay dads, the breast cancer survivors, and the women who wanted to but just couldn’t for whatever reason, breastfeed - rejoiced.

It's obvious why those things made my cry, I suppose. While I am mostly done grieving that I will never breast feed (though, I plan to write more on that later), every once in a while it creeps up on me, and bam: waterworks.

Tonight, though, was something different. During Lent, my congregation uses Holden Evening Prayer, a lovely setting written by Marty Haugen that I adore. The Magnificat, in particular, is so lovely. If you are unfamiliar with the Magnificat in the Bible, it is the song Mary sang after the angel told her she would bear the Son of God. It is a song of gratitude for God's marvelous works, a song of rejoicing for how God has saved the needy throughout history, it hearkens to promises God made, including the promise to Sarah and Abraham that even in their old age, they would conceive and have many descendants. I have always loved these beautiful words, and Marty Haugen's setting is

Magnificat (from artbybetsy.com)

particularly touching. It starts with an introduction sung by the leader, and, if we're being honest, I almost always get choked up singing it.

Tonight, before evening prayer, we had a session about sabbath rest. It was led by my wonderful spiritual director, and the way she opened it up for us was just perfect, and just what I needed. The good conversations we had in small groups affirmed that others had gotten something meaningful out of it as well. My heart was full and at peace as we headed up to worship. I often get emotional leading worship (it just means so much to me!), but I held it together pretty well... until we got to the Magnificat. I started singing the introduction: "An angel went from God to a town called Nazareth to a woman whose name was Mary. The angel said to her, 'Rejoice O highly favored, for God is with you.'" Then I saw the next words: "You shall bear a child..." In the instant before I sang them, I thought about my full heart. I thought about the journey I have been on since my first irregular mammogram, no, since I was told I had Hodgkin's Disease when I was 15, and about how much I have longed my whole life for a child and how the hope of a child has guided and buoyed me through breast cancer decisions. I thought about the wonderful people out in the congregation who have loved me through a good portion of that journey, and who even still take care of me, saying, "Oh, eat more, Pastor, for the baby!" and, "Take some time to rest, Pastor, you need it!" I thought about what a joy it was now to be praising and worshiping our God of love in the midst of all this.

And I completely lost it. I mumbled through tears, "I knew this would happen eventually..." The pianist realized I had stopped, and stopped as well. I said, "I'm gonna need a minute." After a few seconds, I tried again at, "You shall bear a child," and that's as far as I got again, because the joy that inhabits my entire being these days leapt up into my throat and prevented me from squeezing out any more words. The piano kept going, sort of... and I heard a couple of voices in the congregation pick up where I left off, singing what I was unable to sing. I said, "Yes, you sing!" and then lost it even more, surrounded as I was by this beautiful community of faithful people. They pushed ahead into the congregational part of the song, and I read along, tears streaming down my face, unable to sing.

I managed to pull myself together enough to finish off singing the service (almost the whole thing is sung, with a significant part for the cantor). As I said the dismissal, I looked out into their smiling faces, and could hear a few people sniffing along with me, and my heart once again filled with joy. Afterward, they all smiled and consoled me and said they cry at that one, too, and next time if I can't make it they would join in and sing it with me. God, I just love them so much. How did I get so lucky to be their pastor?

On the way home, I sang the whole Magnificat in the car with nary a waver in my voice. There was just something about being in that worshipping community that filled me to, quite literally, overflowing.

And for that, I give thanks, so much thanks.

Marvelously made

Psalm 139 by Robyn Sand Anderson

Today on my congregations' "Simplicity Calendar" the activity is to read Psalm 139, and memorize one verse that is meaningful to us. Well, I'll do one better. This happens to be my favorite Psalm, and after Michael and I had our first ultrasound, I wrote this reflection on the Psalm. So, enjoy.

~ ~ ~

January 15, 2015

Dear Sweet One,

Today we saw you for the first time, and your dad and I cannot get over it. We saw and heard your heart beating like crazy – your heart, your dear, sweet heart that I already love so much. Your heart that is partly my own. (The beautiful e.e. cummings poem comes to mind: “i carry your heart. i carry it in my heart.”) Oh, my love, seeing that little flicker of life in you made our own hearts leap for joy. You are real. You are real and growing inside of me. You are nestled in right where you should be, doing exactly what you should be doing, growing and developing so much every day. Is it strange to say I am already beaming with pride for you? (Get used to it. Your dad has already taken a video of you, and that won’t stop anytime soon!)

This week I am, as I usually do, working on a sermon to preach for Sunday. No one at church yet knows that you exist, and we won’t tell them for a couple more weeks. As I write, I cannot get Sunday’s Psalm out of my head. It is Psalm 139, for a long time my favorite, but this week it has hit me so deeply.

For you yourself created my inmost parts;

     you knit me together in my mother's womb.

I will thank you because I am marvelously made;

     your works are wonderful, and I know it well.

My body was not hidden from you,

     while I was being made in secret and woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb; all of them were written in your book;

     my days were fashioned before they came to be.

Ultrasound at 8 weeks

Oh, Sweet One, to imagine this Psalm being enacted in my own womb right now, imagining God knitting you together right there in your mother’s womb. Your little eyelids, your beating heart, your tiny little fingers forming. (Will they play piano? Guitar? Will they paint? Will they be the hands that love to serve?) You are being lovingly knit together, each precious little part, for the purpose God has intended. Indeed you are marvelously made.

Your dad and I have been planning for you and hoping for you – ah, but our marvelous God has been doing that for so much longer. Your days were fashioned long before they came to be. In the picture from the ultrasound, your Grandma Lois noticed a little glimmer on the top edge of your little pocket in my womb, and suggested the moon was shining down on you. I said no, that was the twinkle in God’s eye. It is the twinkle of knowing something beautiful is coming to pass.

Your dad and I have talked a bit about names, but haven’t come to any decisions yet. But I admit that if you are a girl, one name that keeps coming into my mind is Joy – because this is what fills me when I imagine you. This has been a long journey, Dear One. I have waited for you. And now you, you marvelously made little being, are filling my very core with joy.

                                                                                                All my love,

                                                                                                Mama