don't eat alone

In churches that follow the lectionary cycle, this past Sunday was Transfiguration Sunday, which coincides with the last Sunday in the season of Epiphany before Lent begins. (Did you get all that?) It comes around every year and it is never an easy Sunday to preach for me because, one, it comes around every year and, two, it’s such an enigmatic story. So I stepped out of the supernatural and looked at it alongside of the story of Elijah being carried off by a cosmic chariot instead of dying to think about how we pass our faith along to those who come after us. Here’s what I said.

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Many years ago, Ginger and I had the chance to visit Israel and Palestine. We were with a group of people from the church where Ginger pastored, and so most of our trip had to do with visiting sites mentioned in scripture. At most of them, the guide would say something like, “This is the site where tradition tells us that Jesus . . .” did whatever it was—preached the Sermon on the Mount or fed the multitude or was baptized.

Most of those sites were marked by churches or chapels, and certainly souvenir shops, but they were not the definite places because no one put down a marker where Jesus did those things; the stories just got attached to locations over time.

But then we went to the Kidron Valley, which runs between the Mount of Olives and the Old City of Jerusalem and we came to the stone steps that climbed up out of the valley and though a city gate. As we stood there, our guide said, “Of all the places we have been this is the one place I can say with certainty that Jesus walked because these steps have been in use ever since.”

It was a holy moment to be able to climb those steps, to feel like I had walked where Jesus had walked. I could grasp the moment.

Some of the stories in the Bible are harder to understand because they describe scenes that are difficult to imagine. Both of our passages today paint those kinds of pictures: Jesus’ Transfiguration, when he appeared on the mountaintop with Moses and Elijah, and Elijah’s transcendence from life to whatever lies beyond this life. He didn’t die, he just rode off in a celestial chariot.

There are layers and layers to both stories, and page after page of commentary written by people working hard to describe what the stories mean, which is a meaningful endeavor. But the main reason I chose to focus on the story of Elijah and Elisha is because I was struck by a more down-to-earth question that I heard in these fantastical accounts, and that is:

How do we pass our faith along?

From the start, Jesus gathered people around him as disciples. Followers. The point was for them to learn how God worked in the world and how they could join that work even after Jesus was no longer among them—because Jesus also knew he would die, just like we all do.

(Well, that’s sort of a spoiler for Ash Wednesday.)
Part of the reason he took Peter, James, and John with him when he climbed the mountain was to give them a glimpse of a spiritual dimension they did not grasp in hopes that it would catch hold of their hearts as well.

Elijah was coming to the end of his life and so Elisha joined him as a prophet-in-training. As things drew to a close, Elisha wouldn’t leave Elijah’s side because he didn’t want to miss any chances to learn from the old prophet. When Elijah asked what he could leave the younger man, Elisha said, “Your life repeated in my life. I want to be a holy man just like you.”

“That’s a tough one,” Elijah replied.

He was telling a hard truth. Handing down our faith, or handing it off, or passing it along—whatever phrase is most evocative for you—IS hard work because there are not “best practices” to follow that give us steps to success. Part of the problem is there is no such a thing as second-hand faith.

We can follow someone else’s steps to learn how to bake or cook. Recipes that have been handed down can be followed quite literally. We can take ballroom dance lessons and is all about following the steps of those who have danced before you. Yet even though I know I walked a path that Jesus walked, the faith handed down from then until now wasn’t so specifically choreographed.

I’m not talking about we perpetuate the institutional Church here. I’m talking about the faith in Christ that sustains us, that comforts us, that calls us to courage and justice, that tells us to love one another. And, when we talk about what gets handed down, we are both givers and receivers, teachers and learners.

Faith is not static, like most things in our lives. Our metaphors are only as powerful as they are relevant. I think about how I described my faith twenty or thirty years ago and God is not the same to me now as God was then. A scene in one of the Chronicles of Narnia says this in a way that I keep coming back to. It centers on Aslan, the lion, and Lucy, the youngest of the four children at the heart of the story.

The children had returned to Narnia for a second time and Lucy saw Aslan, the lion, and ran to meet him.

“Aslan, Aslan. Dear Aslan,” sobbed Lucy. “At last.”

The great beast rolled over on his side so that Lucy fell, half sitting and half lying between his front paws. He bent forward and just touched her nose with his tongue. His warm breath came all round her. She gazed up into the large wise face.

“Welcome, child,” he said.

“AsIan,” said Lucy, “you’re bigger.”

“That is because you are older, little one,” answered he.

“Not because you are?”

“I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”

Peter, James, John, and Elisha all found God bigger in the encounters we read today. The stories of the rest of their lives show how they remembered to keep growing, and also how they struggled to keep growing—just as we do.

Still, both the Bible and our lives are also peopled with stories of those who chose not to grow, for a number of reasons. Sometimes we are stunted by grief or trauma, sometimes by anger or hurt or resentment, sometimes by despair. None of those has to be that last word.

I saw a meme that was shared among ministers this week as we prepare for Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day to both be on February 14. One asked, “What are you doing for Valentine’s Day?” and the other replied, “Rubbing dirt in people’s faces and telling them they’re going to die.”

As we prepare for the season of Lent to begin, we often think of the season as a season of giving things up (hopefully not just giving up!). The original intent of “going without” is more about focus: intentionally paring life down so we canpay better attention. So we can grow with God. We may not experience the amazement that Peter, James, John, and Elisha knew, but we can prepare our hearts to see a living, growing God who calls us to think beyond our limits.

Though the Transfiguration feels breathtaking when we read about it, it is not the hallmark of Jesus’ ministry, nor of the disciples’ understanding of him. When they got back down the mountain, the other disciples were frustrated because they couldn’t help others the way Jesus did. Jesus didn’t take them back up the mountain to grow; he took them back among the people to learn how to share their faith, to minister to one another. Elisha crossed the river back into the throes of his life as well—to tell others about a living, growing God.

May we be people who keep growing with God, who keep growing together, and who keep looking for ways to invite others to grow with us as well. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

This week we had a crisis at our house related to Lizzy!, our little dancing extrovert of a Schnoodle who went blind suddenly, or at least so we thought. That story is still unfolding, but in the process of things, she made it into my sermon, which draws from Isaiah 40 and Mark 1.

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This week I have been a part of a couple of unconnected conversations about families with multiple children who are born close together, and it made me think about my family growing up.

We were not a large family; I only have one brother who is twenty-one months younger than I am. As many of you know, both as siblings and as parents, that age gap feels both small and large depending on how old the kids are. When we were both small, it was a lot for my mother, who was the primary stay-at-home parent. She was a good mother for little kids and she loved playing with us, but there were days that weren’t quite as much fun—for any of us—and on those days I can hear her say to my brother and me, “I am sick and tired of you boys acting up.”

I thought about her as I read our scripture for this week because that’s what they are about: being sick and tired, but in reverse: the Isaiah passage is about exhaustion and the story from Mark’s gospel is about illness. They made me think about how much of the Bible is about people who are sick and tired, and about how God shows up in the middle of it all.

As Eric said in his introduction to the passage from the prophet, Isaiah was talking to people who were weary and worn down and were unable to imagine a life other than being weary and worn down. They had allowed themselves to believe that life was hard. Period. They were in exile. They didn’t think they would ever get home. Isaiah offered a word of hope, but it wasn’t all warm and fuzzy.

Have you not been paying attention?
Have you not been listening?
Haven’t you heard these stories all your life?
Don’t you understand the foundation of all things?

He understood their plight, but he didn’t have much room for them to feel sorry for themselves. He wasn’t being callous; he just wanted them to see beyond their exhaustion, to remember God was with them, even in exile. Granted, he could have used a couple of courses in pastoral care. When someone is worn out, “Quit whining” is not necessarily the most compassionate response. Even so, he called them to hear a deep and abiding truth:

God doesn’t come and go. God lasts. God is creator of all you can see or imagine. God doesn’t get tired out, doesn’t pause to catch a breath. God knows everything, inside and out. God energizes those who get tired, gives fresh strength to dropouts.

For even young people tire and drop out, young folk in their prime stumble and fall. But those who wait upon God get fresh strength. They spread their wings and soar like eagles, They run and don’t get tired, they walk and don’t lag behind.

In our story from Mark’s gospel, Jesus went to Peter’s house because his mother-in-law was sick and running a high fever. (A quick side note: Peter had a mother-in-law, which means Peter was married—something we don’t often think about.) Jesus went into the house, took her hand, helped her out of bed, and, Mark says, she got up and served them dinner. She got back to being who she was.

Sick and tired. Either way, God meets us there and offers presence and hope—which is not to say God makes everything better or that as long as we trust God everything will work out fine. Life doesn’t work that way. There are thousands of faithful people praying in Gaza every day who feel like they have more than they can handle and have no illusion that it’s all going to work out somehow. There are people living in Hamden who feel the same way. If committing our livers to God meant everything would go our way then we wouldn’t have half of our scriptures, and we certainly wouldn’t have the Psalms. They are filled with songs of the sick and tired both calling out to God for help and thanking God for God’s love and presence.

When it comes to the last verse of Isaiah 40, most of our translations say, “Those that wait upon God will renew their strength.” The Hebrew word is better understood as “those who trust in God,” or “those who put their hope in God”—those who are willing to bet their lives that love will be the last word. In reality, that is often easier said than done.

But I think it actually gets lived out something like this:

Friday morning I got up with our oldest Schnauzer, Lizzy!, who is the most joyous little creature you have ever seen, and as I opened the door to let her out I realized she was blind. She bumped into the door. We her to the vet and learned she has genetic glaucoma, which has been chipping away at her eyesight her whole life. She is fully blind in her right eye. We are still hopeful we may be able to keep some sight in her left eye, though we won’t know how much or for how long until we are able to see how she tolerates the drops.

Once we got her pain under control, she began to adjust, as the vet said she would. Not only that, on Saturday morning I got up to let the dogs out. Lizzy! made her way to the top of the stairs and waited to get her bearings. Elena, our newest rescue, passed her and then came back up beside her and brushed her shoulder as if to say, “I’ve got you; come on.” And Lizzy! bounded down the stairs behind her.

Whether we are able to soar above our circumstances, run with the tenacity of a marathoner, take it a step at a time, or simply find the strength to get up and fix dinner, we can help remind each other of the hope we have in trusting God together, a trust that lets us be something other than sick and tired.

Some years ago, I wrote a poem responding to something I saw in myself. I felt like most every time someone asked how I was doing I said, “I’m tired.” In the early versions of my poem I started with

when they ask how you’re doing

say something other than tired
say something other than busy
look for something to say
beyond the shadow of circumstance

But the longer I lived with what I had written, the more I decided that was not what I wanted to say. So I rewrote it and this is the version I kept.

when they ask how you’re doing

it’s okay to say you’re tired
to tell the story of how life
wore you out and left you here
but don’t stop there

sing a weary melody and invite
them to sing the harmony
they’ll know the song
it’s not an original composition

Sometimes life leaves us sick and tired—and when it does, may we remember we belong to a God who does not leave us alone; we belong to one another and can share the load; may we take the hand that is offered and keep going. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

A few years ago, I was speaking at a youth camp and I began by saying, “I basically have one sermon—we are all worthy of love and here to love each other—and I just keep trying to find new ways to say it.” Well, here’s another example. The text was 1 Corinthians 8:1-13.

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For most of human history people thought the Earth was the center of the universe. We thought the sun revolved around us—well, once we figured out we weren’t on a flat surface. But it has been in my lifetime—and in most of yours—that the reality that we are not the center of things really hit home—at least that is what some cultural historians say.

When the first astronauts went to the moon, they took a picture of our planet from space. It was the first time anyone had been far enough away to have that point of view. As I remember it, one of the astronauts said it was a “big, blue marble.”

We have not been the same since. Our planet was small enough to fit in a camera lens. We weren’t the center of anything other than our lives. It is a truth we still struggle to fully comprehend, to fully engage, and it has a more profound impact on us that just our sense of our place in the solar system.

But the idea that we are not the center of everything is a profoundly personal and human truth as much as it is an astronomical one. And so we move from orbits to idols.

I don’t think the apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian church about meat sacrificed to idols because it was a huge moral dilemma. Don’t get me wrong: it was a big deal in the congregation, but things that become big conflicts in congregations are quite often small issues.

I heard recently about a church that split—I mean broke apart—over an apple crisp recipe. There was a recipe that had been handed down and used for years. When a new generation of bakers stepped in to carry on the tradition, they wanted to tweak the recipe. Instead, they ended up with two congregations. Over apple crisp.

Like I said, I don’t think the meat was the real issue Paul was addressing, but the meat uncovered the problem. Corinth was a town known for its temples to all sorts of deities, and those deities demanded all sorts of festivals and sacrifices, which, it seems, often meant meat was served.

For many of the church members, being in places where that meat was served didn’t present a problem. The theology was straight forward: We worship the one true God, so those idols aren’t real deities, which means the meat wasn’t really sacrificed to anything and barbeque is barbeque, no matter who cooked it. Let’s eat.

But some in the church had converted from those other sects and religions. They had believed in those idols, and worshipped them. The gears were not as easy to shift. To eat that meat was to fall back into things they had left behind. Some were hurt by those who ate the meat, it seems; some were angered; some felt betrayed or ignored. For some, it was a dangerous invitation.

So Paul said, “Choose people over steaks.” Don’t let the church split over dinner. If you know what you are doing is causing damage to someone else, don’t do it. Your rights are not the most important thing; our relationships are.

Paul, as you can see, was not an American.

As Americans, we were taught early that we have “inalienable rights,” rights that cannot be taken or given away: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (I love the last one: you have the right to try and be happy.) Over time, that has evolved into a strong sense of individual rights, which far too often is interpreted to mean something like, “I have the right to do what I want,” which is not an untrue statement, necessarily, but it is an incomplete one. Life is rarely, if ever, about just me.

As you have heard me say more than once, life and faith are team sports. How we play nicely together has to do with how we pay attention to the impact of our words and actions, regardless of our intent, or what we think we have the right to do.

In the scenario described in our scripture passage today, those who ate the meat didn’t think it was a big deal. They assumed that if it wasn’t a big deal to them, then it wasn’t a big deal, period. Paul questioned their logic, reminding them that their perspectives weren’t the center of everything. He wasn’t saying they weren’t free to eat the meat, he was asking them to consider more than just the menu. They were also free to choose not to eat the meat and strengthen the relationships within the congregation.

Why not, then, choose the option that frees someone else as well?

When we lived in Durham, North Carolina one of my favorite places to meet people to talk or hang out was Fullsteam Brewery, which was in walking distance of our house. The people that owned it created an atmosphere of belonging that just made me want to be in the room. One of my good friends there was in recovery. We got together often to talk and work on creative projects together, but when I met with her I did it at a coffee shop nearby. I chose supporting her recovery over hanging out in my favorite gathering place.

But then you get to the apple crisp and it’s a different kind of digging in. That church didn’t split because the recipe wasn’t a big deal; it was, to both sides. Now I am choosy about my apple pie (I prefer pie over crisp myself), but whatever was going on in that church was not really about apples. Truth is most every congregation has stories—maybe not as dramatic as this one—about people who have left the church because of something where people got dug in and it became a power struggle. Folks made being right or being in charge or being whatever they thought they had to be over choosing each other.

And that is what it boils down to: choosing each other.

Many years ago, I heard a work colleague trashing Valentine’s Day because, he said, “it was a Hallmark holiday made up to get us to spend money on flowers and chocolate.” He didn’t say it to start an argument, but I felt the need to respond. What I said was, “I don’t know that I need to defend Hallmark, but I figure any chance I have to let Ginger know I love her is worth taking, so happy Valentine’s Day.”

Whatever the issue, whether it’s the apple crisp, or how things are stored in the kitchen, or what color we paint the trim, or whatever might come up that we find ourselves feeling either entitled to do or somehow desperate to hang to, why not choose, instead, to find a way to say, “You matter more to me than how we clean the coffee pot.”

Life is not a battle, or even a series of skirmishes, unless we make it so.

Why not take the chance to say, “I love you,” in a tangible way?

Whether we are talking about life together here at church, or in marriages, or families, or friendships—whatever the relationship is—may we remember we are not the center of the universe. It is more important to be right, or to be first, or to be able to do whatever we think we have the right to do. So Paul wrote, “Sometimes our humble hearts can help us more than our proud minds.”

A few paragraphs later in his letter to Corinth that Paul wrote words that are more well-known:

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

Let us love one another every chance we get. Amen.

I wish someone would write an account of how those who put together the Revised Common Lectionary came to their decisions as to what should be read from week to week, which passages went together, and even what should be left out of the regular three-year cycle.

I’m sure the reason no one has done that is I am a part a small niche market that would doom the book to poor sales, so the mystery will remain largely unsolved. Nevertheless, some weeks, like this one, give us an interesting juxtaposition of two passages that are telling different stories and yet have a sort of strange harmony.

The Book of Jonah is one of the more intriguing parts of scripture, and one that has seeped into popular culture. You don’t have to have grown up in church to know about Jonah and the whale. Jonah was a Hebrew person whom God called to go the town of Nineveh, which was where the modern town of Mosul, Iraq is today. That also means it was inland and west of where Jonah lived. Instead, he ran to the port of Joppa (part of Tel Aviv today) and caught a ship to Tarshish in southern Spain.

Perhaps you know the part about spending three days inside a big fish who spit him up on dry land. Exactly what dry land we don’t know, but we do know God came back and told him—again—to go to Nineveh, which he did, and that’s when the part of the story we read happened.

Despite the fact that Jonah didn’t like the Ninevites at all, they heard what he had to say and responded to God. As I heard another preacher say this week, God even uses complainers to spread the love. Good to know, I suppose. Also good to notice, that one man came to town and changed everything.

In our gospel account, we get a similar snippet of a fuller story. Mark jumps from Jesus’ temptations to John’s arrest—those things didn’t not happen directly in sequence, or at least that appears to be the case when we look at the other gospels. For Mark, what matters most is that John’s arrest seemed to call Jesus to action. It was the catalyst for him to begin his public ministry. And the way he began was to call others.

We often think of John the Baptist as Jesus’ warm-up act, but John had a bigger role that than. Some suggest we would do better to see him as a mentor more than an opener. John was preaching a baptism of repentance; Jesus began by saying, “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom! Change your hearts and lives and trust this good news!”—also a message of repentance. They were both saying the same thing.

From the start, Jesus began building a community, as we see in our passage. As he walked through town, he called out to Peter and Andrew, and then to James and John, to leave what they were doing (which was carrying on the family business of fishing) and go with him so they could learn how to catch people.

Mark says all four of them dropped what they were doing and followed him, leaving their fathers and other workers a bit perplexed, I imagine. But, like the people of Nineveh, when they heard a call to change the way they were living they responded by changing. Nonetheless, it was not a Moses-on-the-mountain kind of moment; it was a conversation among friends after breakfast.

When we read either story, we tend to focus on what was happening with Jonah and Jesus, but let’s look today at those who listened to them—and really heard what they were saying.

We talked last week about the word repent, when it’s used in the Bible, having to do more with making a change in your life and less with the sense of shame and regret that the word carries in English. Our stories carry a bit of both. Jonah went to tell the Ninevites their lives were so atrocious that God was ready to destroy them, so they needed to make big changes. Jesus didn’t use the word repent when he called the boys from their boats, but he called them to a drastic change of life: drop what you’re doing and come with me.

In both cases, the people responded. They dropped what they were doing and chose a different path.

So here the questions: How do we learn to open our hearts like that? What does it take for us to change? To repent? How do we break the routines of our lives so the Spirit can flourish in us?

Perhaps the changes we are contemplating do not feel as drastic as it seemed to be for the Ninevites or the soon-to-be disciples, or perhaps they are, but both examples remind us of the consequences of important small changes, because even though both events come across huge in scripture, they are relatively small moments. Whispers. Conversations. Choices.

Let me offer a different example.

Our house was built in 1795, which means, among other things, that we have very little storage space. The early Americans may have fought for freedom, but they didn’t care much about closets. Soon after we moved into our house eight years ago, we bought a bathroom cabinet at IKEA in New Haven.

If you have shopped there, you know that means I had to put it together using instructions translated from Swedish, illustrations that are open to interpretation, and an Allen wrench, one of the banes of human existence. If Hell is a reality, it will include the distribution of Allen wrenches.

I put it together and the door wouldn’t close correctly. The sexton from the church came over and corrected my mistakes, but it the process, the small magnet that held the door closed got lost. I made one unsuccessful trip back to IKEA to see if they had a spare one and then it fell off my radar. The door has hung slightly ajar for eight years.

Until a few nights ago when we saw a commercial for (I kid you not) Monkey Magnets, which are small door magnets that are self-adhesive and install easily. I ordered them, they came in on Thursday, and I fixed the door without telling Ginger. I wanted to see if she would notice, which she did. She thanked me and said, “I feel loved when you do stuff like that.”

My call to repentance didn’t come from anyone as angry as Jonah or as inspiring as Jesus; I responded to a television announcer. Still, the impact on my life and my wife was profound, even with a small change.

The analogy may be a bit strained, but the point is the decisions that can change our lives and open our hearts to both the Spirit of God and the world are not necessarily as enormous as walking away from your job in the middle of your shift. Hearts are mended and lives are opened by important small changes, by moments when we step into God’s call on our lives.

Even our passage this morning describes a small moment: Jesus was walking by and said, “Come with me,” and they did. They could have said no, but they didn’t, and their lives were never the same. What important small changes are calling us? What will we drop, leave behind, pick up, see, hear, or find? Amen.

Peace,
Milton