Five years cancer-free!

I dutifully went to see my oncologist last month for a check up, and she said, "Oh, you're four years and eleven months out!" Though I knew that, it hadn't occurred to me how close I really was to the FIVE YEARS mark. Five years, of course, is that golden anniversary where the imminent possibility of the cancer returning has passed, and I can drop down to seeing the doctor only once a year. Tomorrow, May 14, will mark being five years cancer-free.

Five years. Cancer-free.

This morning my parents, husband and kids were all in church when I thanked my congregation for having walked with me through that time, and through the years since. On this Mother's Day, I marveled that here I stand, healthy, vibrant, and with two busy, noisy, and so very dear children who delight me to no end, who grin when they see me and come running toward me in the way that toddlers do. Five years ago, they were only a hope I didn't know would ever come to pass.

Hodgkin's Lymphoma treatments threatened my fertility. At this time five years ago, I had never tried to have a child and didn't know if I could, if infertility had in fact resulted from my chemotherapy.

Breast cancer, which is hormone receptive (at least mine was), taunted the possibility of getting pregnant, threatening to come back with a vengeance if I ever got pregnant (due to the hormones that accompany pregnancy). Then of course it took one breast, then the other, and with it my dreams of breastfeeding my babies.

But neither of them could take away motherhood from me. I win, cancer. I WIN.

Grace Victoria is so named because she represented for me a true VICTORY (Victoria) over cancer, and because she reflects God's amazing GRACE in my life - both in saving it, and in all the ways God has used me since to fulfill God's purposes.

Today, as I watch my gracious victory child grow and learn and develop, and her brother right behind her, I marvel that I would be here today at all, and that I would have these two amazing humans, these post-cancer babies that have blessed me and my life so richly.

And so on this Mother's Day, on this eve of my 5-year "cancer-versary," I am giving thanks all the more heartily for the gift of life, for the immense gift of being a mother to these two, and for the lessons both cancer and my children have taught me about living. Cancer tried numerous times to take a lot from me, but it didn't. And I have a whole lot of grace and laughter in my life to prove it.

Thank you God, for the gift of being mother to these beautiful beings. Thank you for my life, and for theirs, and that I get to watch life blossom and grow in their little lives every day. I am truly blessed.

I hope you will join me in celebrating this milestone in my life by donating to help people who have not been as lucky as I am, or who are still working on getting there. Consider donating to one of these organizations:

Metavivor - http://www.metavivor.org/
Metastatic breast cancer is what people die from, yet less than 5% of funding for breast cancer research goes to metastatic breast cancer. 100% of a donation to Metavivor will go toward this life-saving research.

Breast Cancer Coalition of Rochester - http://bccr.org/
This local organization helped me through my diagnosis, treatments, and follow-up by way of providing resources, a mentor, educational events, support groups, and even a few just-for-fun events for young survivors. I now serve as one of the mentors for newly diagnosed women. They do great work!

(I looked for one that helps Hodgkin's/lymphoma, or childhood cancer, but didn't find one in the time I have before the end of nap time. If you know of a good one, donate there!)

Sermon: Broken for you (May 6, 2018)

Easter 6 (NL4)

May 6, 2018

Philippians 1:1-18a

INTRODUCTION

            This week we move from Acts, which is more of a story, telling about Paul’s travels, to Philippians, which is a letter Paul wrote to the Christians in the city of Philippi. Such letters are what make up much of the New Testament – letters written, mostly by Paul, to Christian communities he encounters on his travels. To us, 2000 years later, they help us to understand more about the nature of God, how God’s work applies to our lives, how Christ’s ministry and essence formed the early church, and how the Spirit continues to work among us.

            These writings, letters, are some of the most loved, known, and quotable bits of Scripture, but they can also be challenging to understand. They are more theological, reflective, and often more heady. Paul’s letters, especially, were carefully crafted, and meant to be read aloud by a trained orator – if not carefully read, they can be very difficult to follow!

They’re also challenging because the text alone does not always provide the backstory. If you read one email or letter between two people, but didn’t know their relationship, their history, the context, or the event they are discussing, you’d get something out of the letter, but not a lot – yet that is what we are trying to do with Paul’s letters. So it’s helpful, in trying to understand the text, to know some of that backstory.

            So let me start by telling you a bit about the Philippian context generally, since we will spend the next three weeks in the letter to the Philippians. The city of Philippi was the first center of Christianity in Europe, located on a major trade route that led to Rome. Paul was masterful at planting the gospel in strategic locations like this. Philippi was designated as a Roman colony, so its citizens had the same status and rights as those living in Rome.

As for Paul’s relationship with the church in Philippi – it was good. He loved the Philippian church very much, and they cared for him. Paul, as we will find out, is writing this letter from prison, where he’d ended up again for preaching the Way of Jesus Christ. This message got him thrown in jail because it was a threat to the Roman Empire, since he was preaching Jesus as king, not Caesar. It was politically subversive. First century prisons were not like prisons today, where everyone’s needs are cared for from within the prison. Prisoners depended upon outside help for food and water and anything they would need. So one member of the Philippian congregation, Epaphroditus, was sent from Philippi to support Paul, bring him supplies. But he gets deathly ill along the way! The congregation back home heard about the illness, and that he had been unable to deliver the supplies, and they were quite distressed, not only for their buddy, but also because they loved Paul and feared for him. But in fact, Epaphroditus did make it to Paul, illness and all – true service in weakness! So Paul sent this letter back with him, not only assuring the congregation that he was just fine, even better than fine, and that God was using his circumstances for good, but also commending them for their great faith and their partnership in the gospel and in his mission to spread it. Ok, that’s the set up. Let’s hear the letter.

[READ]

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

            I have to say, some of the most beautiful writings have come out of prison. Martin Luther King’s Letter From Birmingham Jail comes to mind. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers From Prison is one of the works that made me fall in love with theology in college, and in love with him in particular. Nelson Mandela’s letters from prison helped to build a new South Africa. And of course, we have this letter Paul wrote to the Philippians – as well as several others letters he wrote from jail that are included in the Bible.

            What is it about being imprisoned that produces such moving, marvelous and redemptive writings?

            I’d venture to guess, it has to do with the inherent vulnerability of being in such a place as prison, where you are forced every day to face the brokenness of humanity. That is, prison is a place where one is hungry for some hope. I read a quote this week that speaks to this. It is from Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer who works to provide legal assistance to condemned prisoners. This is from his best-selling book, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. He writes, “I do what I do because I’m broken, too. [My work with prisoners] exposed my own brokenness… We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent.”

What an astute and powerful reminder! One we could all benefit from. What could be more humbling than being in prison, to be daily confronted with your own brokenness? Though, I really admire Stevenson’s ability to recognize this – many of us might be tempted to look upon prisoners and be moved to self-righteousness, to think, “Well at least I’m not as bad as that guy. I’ve never done anything so bad as to land me here!” But Stevenson instead sees his experience as a mirror, an opportunity to see not how we are different or better or worse than one another, but rather, how we are the same. And seeing our common humanity – that is the first step toward powerful connection, even toward partnership.

I heard a guy on the NPR show “Here and Now” this week, talking about the advice he hears in graduation speeches that he doesn’t like. One piece of advice he dislikes is, “Always search for the good in people.” His argument is that people show you who they are pretty quickly, and if you don’t see good in them in the first few moments, then don’t waste your time looking for it. I don’t much like his argument, but it did make me wonder if searching for the good is really the best way to connect with people. To search for the good is to ask, “Are you good enough for me to spend my time with?” What if instead, we looked for the pain in people? Where are they hurting? Where do they need love and care? And then the key question: where have I felt a similar pain? Because when we see pain in someone, and can relate it to our own experience, that is when we are compelled to reach out compassionately and make a connection, to step into our common humanity together, to see one another as fellow members of a broken humanity – not as better or worse than one another. That is when we are on the same plane. That is where we can truly and mutually love one another – and not just for what the other person to offer us, or how good they are, or how good we are.

            In his book, Stevenson reflects further. He mentions a Thomas Merton quote: “We are bodies of broken bones.” Then he goes on: “I guess I’d always known but never fully considered that being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we’re fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we are shattered by things we never would have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion. … But simply punishing the broken – walking away from them or hiding them from sight – only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.”

            I wonder if that is what Paul is getting at when he talks about partnership in the Gospel in his letter to the Philippian church? I wonder if that is the “overflowing love” he talks about – not the love that comes from seeing that someone is good like you, but the love that comes from seeing someone is broken like you. After all, our brokenness is all that truly unites all of humanity, regardless of our background or history. That brokenness is the reason God became one of us, to fully experience what it is like to be so broken, so that God could then be in the deepest and most vulnerable sort of relationship with us. It is because of that brokenness that Jesus died and rose again, to show us that death and despair don’t have the final word. It is to that brokenness that the gospel brings hope.

            Love that comes out of the assurance of that mutual relationship is indeed overflowing. It is the love characterized by the Philippian church when they cared for Paul in prison, by Epaphroditus when he powered through illness to bring supplies to Paul, by Paul when he risked his life to plant churches and spread the gospel. And it is the love we live out whenever we seek to truly see people’s pain, connect with them, and reach out with compassion. May we always see one another as fellow members of a broken humanity, all of us in constant need of the love, grace and hope our God offers.

For my closing prayer, I will use Paul’s own prayer for the Philippian church, which worked so hard to live out a gospel of overflowing love. I believe you also work hard to live out that gospel, and so let’s let Paul’s prayer be also for us. Let us pray… Lord God, this is our prayer, that our love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight, to help us determine what is best, so that on the day of Christ we may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Is the truth really what we want?

Despite my best efforts, I found myself pulled into all the hubbub about Michelle Wolf's comedy routine at the White House Correspondent's Dinner last weekend. I don't want to get into the nitty gritty details here, so sufficed to say: I don't much care for Michelle Wolf's style, I often don't find her very funny, and I thought this routine was pretty mean (as roasts often are). Her style is just not my taste.

But, that aside, I also saw her as a truth teller.

I have tried to be fair in my evaluation of this, and I think I have been. One must keep in mind, of course, that she was hired to roast and make jokes. A part of her medium (comedy) is to take morsels of truth and exaggerate them to highlight how absurd the truth really is. (Finding absurdity in our current political climate is hardly a challenge, since I think our president prides himself on blowing apart precedent, though exaggerating the truth might be difficult because reality already seems to be a constant stream of superlatives!) That is what she did - she lifted out so many absurd things, things to which we have become immune because they are so constant, and hearing them rattled off one after another like that was, well, offensive. It was to me, and it was so many who watched.

But offensive is exactly what the truth can be sometimes, can't it?

That's what got Jesus and the prophets alike into trouble, after all.

A few days after this routine, I taught my confirmation class about the prophets. We defined a prophet as one who speaks God's truth to power. As a part of the class, I pulled out three well-known prophecies from three different prophets and had small groups work through them. One was Amos 5, and I gave them the translation from The Message, because the language packs a punch for obviously to a modern ear. (See below.) As I read it with them, I found myself thinking, "Man, Amos was mean." Don't get me wrong - I love me some Amos - but that's a lot easier for me to say centuries later, when he's not talking directly to me. If I had been living in the 8th century BCE, I would not love me some Amos. Because he was, indeed, mean. Harsh. He didn't mince words. And he didn't use comedy to do it. He simply spoke the truth, in a way people needed to hear it. I'm sure if he lived in the 21st century, social media would be full of degrading memes about him, undermining and discrediting his truth-telling.

I'm not saying Wolf is a prophet. But, as I thought about Amos, and about Michelle Wolf, I realized some things about the truth. In what is being called a "post-truth era" (whatever that means), we all claim that we want to know what is really the truth. But what we really mean is, we want to hear whatever truth affirms what we already believe to be true, and what truth won't challenge us too much or make us change our ways or beliefs.

Think about it - when do you get offended by something? Speaking for myself, if someone says something I absolutely know to be false, it doesn't really bother me. If it is something I know no one else will believe, it doesn't matter. When I get reactive is when I fear that something I hear that I don't like... might actually be true. Or that people might actually believe. That is, I get defensive when I feel there is a need to defend, to dispel the possibility that what I hold true, about myself or about the world, might be in danger.

So yes, we want to hear the truth. Just as long as it justifies our current beliefs, and allows us to keep on hating and fearing whom and what we already do.

I don't want to sound jaded. Some people truly do want to hear the truth to grow, to expand their horizons, to become better. This is humanity at its best. And sometimes I am there. My goal has become to spend more time there, to always take time for self-evaluation, to ask myself, when I feel the need to defend myself or my idea, "Where is this reaction coming from? What am I really defending?"

And, to be humble enough and prepared for the fact that what I'm defending... really needs to go away.

God grant us hearts ready to change, if God so chooses.

Amos 5:6-7, 10-15 from The Message (contemporary translation of the Bible)

Seek God and live! You don’t want to end up
    with nothing to show for your life
But a pile of ashes, a house burned to the ground.
    For God will send just such a fire,
    and the firefighters will show up too late.

Woe to you who turn justice to vinegar
    and stomp righteousness into the mud.
…

People hate this kind of talk.
    Raw truth is never popular.
But here it is, bluntly spoken:
    Because you run roughshod over the poor
    and take the bread right out of their mouths,
You’re never going to move into
    the luxury homes you have built.
You’re never going to drink wine
    from the expensive vineyards you’ve planted.
I know precisely the extent of your violations,
    the enormity of your sins. Appalling!
You bully right-living people,
    taking bribes right and left and kicking the poor when they’re down.

Justice is a lost cause. Evil is epidemic.
    Decent people throw up their hands.
Protest and rebuke are useless,
    a waste of breath.

Seek good and not evil—
    and live!
You talk about God, the God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
    being your best friend.
Well, live like it,
    and maybe it will happen.

 Hate evil and love good,
    then work it out in the public square.
Maybe God, the God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
    will notice your remnant and be gracious.

Sermon: Holy annoyance (April 22, 3018)

Easter 4 (NL4)

April 22, 2018

Acts 16:16-34

INTRODUCTION

            A lot has happened since the story we heard last week, about Paul’s conversion. It’s been several years, and Paul is getting his bearings as an apostle and church planter. He has been affirmed by the Council at Jerusalem, as a legit apostle of Jesus Christ, and a witness, especially to the Gentiles. So now he’s off doing his thing. He had been traveling with Peter and Barnabas, but at some point along the way, they got in a fight and decided it would be best to go their separate ways (see, even apostles sometimes don’t get along!). The rest of Acts follows the path of Paul and Silas.

They had planned to go a couple places on their travels, but the Holy Spirit had advised them not to do that. So now, Paul and Silas find themselves without anywhere to go, and so they wander around until they get a vision about a man from Macedonia… so they take this as a message and head there, and find themselves in Philippi, which is where our story is set. And as they are wandering around, they are followed by this girl shouting fortunes at them. And that’s what kicks off our story. It’s a story with dramatic turns – a possessed girl, an angry mob, two men unjustly imprisoned, a dramatic breakout opportunity, and a whole family conversion. Let’s hear it.

[READ]

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

            “And Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to her, ‘I order you, in the name of Jesus Christ, come out of her!”

            It might be the only exorcism that came not out of a desire to heal someone in need, but out of sheer annoyance.

            There is so much to love about this text, so many preaching possibilities. And yet every time I sat down with this text this week, I couldn’t get past this opening scene with the slave girl who has a spirit of divination, and the “very much annoyed” apostle, Paul.

            When I can’t shake something like that in a biblical text, it usually means the Spirit is trying to tell me something, so I leaned into it, into this slave girl and Paul’s response to her, and this question arose: is there such a thing as “holy annoyance”? What might holy annoyance look like, and where might it lead us?

            Maybe we start by describing annoyance in general. Is it something you’re familiar with? Yeah? How many of you have been annoyed? Who is annoyed by bad drivers? Who is annoyed by people not pulling their weight? Who here is annoyed by dishes or laundry being left around the house? Tell me – what are some other things that annoy you? [wait for answers]

            There’s a real variety! And those things, those little annoyances – they eat away at us, right? They fester, they tear us (and possibly others) down, they frustrate us and maybe even paralyze us, keep us from wanting to do the good work we were made to do, at least do to it joyfully. Annoyances can really bog you down!

            A friend of mine just wrote a piece about what she called “Two marriage hacks” – two tricks to have a happy and successful marriage. The first was to keep a running list of all the reasons you married that person in the first place, and all the moments that affirm that decision – and refer to it often. That one is fun, or can be. The second is much harder. It is to let go of the story you’re telling yourself. So when you come home from work and your spouse has once again left all their dirty dishes for you to wash, or won’t stop jabbering on about all the details about something you really don’t care about, or whatever your annoyance de jour is, you start telling yourself, “He doesn’t care about me. She doesn’t value my time as much as her own. He doesn’t keep my needs in mind. She is selfish” …That’s the story you need to let go of. And this goes beyond marriage, of course; it applies to any significant relationship. Those stories we tell ourselves about why people do annoying things are serving no one. They only tear away at your heart, at your relationship with that person, and maybe even your relationship with God.

            That’s what annoyance can do. It can cause resentment, self-pity, self-righteousness, judgment. Annoyance can be mundane, or it can be very destructive, to our interactions with strangers as well as in our most important relationships.

            So, if that’s annoyance… what on earth is “holy annoyance”?  

Holy annoyance is the sort of annoyance that can serve as a catalyst for transformation. It snaps you out of whatever was keeping you focused on yourself, and moves you toward God’s will, toward life. It moves you out of your self-pity party, and ultimately leads to a conversion experience.

Just look at today’s story. Paul and Silas have been wandering around Philippi. The text tells us that this girl with the spirit of divination has been following them for many days – many days! – before Paul finally casts out that spirit. Can you think of any other story in which Jesus or an apostle goes days before attending to the needs of the people they encounter? I can’t! So Paul clearly had something else on his mind that he let this go so long. His attention was elsewhere, not where it needed to be. And it was that annoyance that finally snapped his attention back to the mission had been sent to do.

            A colleague was just telling me his call to ministry was that way. His mind was elsewhere for many years, while God pestered him about his call to ministry. He kept shaking it off, doing his own thing, until finally he said, “Okay, fine! You win! I’ll go to seminary!” Had he not been so annoyed, he would have kept his eyes on his own will instead of God’s, and perhaps never answered that call. Holy annoyance.

            Now we don’t all receive a call to ordained ministry. But for all of us, annoyance, whether mundane or severe, always has the power either to keep us distracted, or to set us on a godly course, if we’ll let it. Whether it sets you down the path of distraction, or the path of God’s will, is a matter of how you view it.

            We’re pretty good at letting it nip at us and be destructive. To be continually distracted by it, you can keep telling yourself that same story of self-pity, self-righteousness, and judgment. (“Hang up and drive!” “Wash your dishes, would you??” “Stop tapping your fingernails like that, it’s driving me nuts!!”) But what is necessary for mere annoyance to become holy annoyance?

            In my life, I have found that when I’m annoyed by something, or angered, or frustrated, it ultimately has very little to do with the thing annoying me, and more to do with the way that thing rubs up against something going on with me. Whatever is the irritant triggers something in my heart, or my past, or my belief system, and I react – I get annoyed. So there is the key by which to turn destructive annoyance into holy annoyance: figure out what is going on in you that’s causing your reaction, what value is being threatened, what belief is being challenged, what negative memory is being brought up. Dwell there for a little while, considering how that irritation might be pointing you toward a change, a conversion, in your heart.

            And, like Paul, call upon the name of Jesus Christ to drive out the annoyance, and turn it into new life. I don’t mean, pray that the annoying thing would go away. I mean, ask Jesus to show to you how this revelation can be used to point you toward God’s work.

            And then, trust God, even if you don’t see results right away. This event with the girl and the spirit really isn’t the point of this story. The real meat of the story is later – Paul and Silas get arrested for “disturbing the peace,” they are flogged and beaten, and they are imprisoned. This is not going well for them! But there they encounter other prisoners and bring the hope of Christ to them through song. Ah, now we are getting somewhere. That holy annoyance had sent them to prison to witness to those prisoners!

But wait, there’s more! An earthquake releases the captives, but devastates the jailer, who is about to kill himself for the shame of his failure. This prompts Paul to reach out to him, saying, “No, don’t do it! We are still here!” And through this encounter, the jailer comes to faith in Christ. He reaches out in love to these criminals, washes their wounds, feeds them a meal, and he and his whole family are baptized.

You see what happened? God needed Paul and Silas to be in jail at that particular time, so that they could witness to the jailer, so that they could be loved and cared for by their enemy, so that a whole family could come to faith through their witness. There is conversion in this story – of the jailer, his family, and I’d argue also for Paul and Silas – and that conversion started with an annoyance. A holy annoyance.

Who could have known that the annoying slave girl with the spirit of divination was exactly the tool God was using to bring the jailor to Christ?

I have been wondering all week whatever happened to that girl who had the spirit. What was her life like after Paul, in a fit of annoyance, cast out the spirit? We will never know, of course. And those who observed this might never have known the path that this event set these men upon, the way that the girl’s exorcism led to new life for a Roman jailor and his family, the way it brought hope to some prisoners, and the way it deepened the faith of a couple of apostles. We often don’t see the whole story of how God works.

And, sometimes we don’t see how an annoyance, if we take it seriously, and discern how that annoyance might be moving our hearts, ends up guiding us or placing us exactly where we need to be. Annoyance can certainly be a holy experience. Indeed, when we call upon the name of Jesus, it can bring about a conversion that leads to new life – for us and for the world.

            Let us pray… Annoying God, you are always nagging us, urging us, prodding us to examine our hearts, and showing us how we might turn them toward you. Help us to see all those things that annoy us as entry points to discern your will for our lives. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.