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all together

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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We read Paul’s writings as theological texts instead of letters much of the time. The passage for today from Ephesians gives me the feeling that Paul was writing to remind folks of what they already knew about life together more than he was trying to lay down the law. And his words helped me remember words and music written by old friends and sung with so many people down the years.

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“So be careful to live your life wisely, not foolishly. Make the most of every opportunity because these are desperate times.”

That’s the first sentence of our passage for today, which lets us know we came in on the middle of the conversation. Paul had been admonishing the recipients of his letter to be aware, to courageous, to be intentional in all sorts of situations, and then he boiled it down to say, “So be careful to live your life wisely, not foolishly. Make the most of every opportunity because these are desperate times.”

If we were to update the last sentence into a more contemporary phrasing, we might say, “Seize the day because it’s all we have,” or “Live like there’s no tomorrow,” but how do we live into those words in ways that make them more than a good slogan?

Let me ask my question another way: What is the difference between wise and foolish?

Wisdom is more than being smart or educated or clever. We talk about the owl as a symbol for wisdom, though I’m not sure why other than they have the sense to pay attention and not say much. When I searched for why the owl is considered wise, I found that the explanation went all the way back to the goddess Athena who saw wisdom in the owl because of its big eyes and solemn appearance. But there’s more to wisdom than looking the part.

The Hebrew notion of wisdom was the ability to function well in life and in relationships. It carried a sense of discernment and hospitality. A wise person was one who had a sense of themselves and how they were connected to everyone and everything around them. “Work,” he said, “to understand God’s intent for our lives.”

I’ll come back to that, but first, I want to notice that the root of the word fool can also mean a blacksmith’s bellows, as in a wind bag. To be foolish is full of hot air, if you will, or blown by the wind without any sense of intention or grounding.

Paul then went on with a couple of other comparisons. Along with being wise and not foolish, he exhorted his readers to be intentional rather than careless and filled with God’s spirit rather than being drunk. All three contrast those who look to live as though they are a part of a larger whole with those who are self-absorbed.

Now let’s go back to what it means to understand God’s intent for our lives. When Paul told people to be filled with the Spirit of God, he said it happened in three ways: by speaking to each other in a melody of love, singing songs that draw us together, and being grateful in the midst of our circumstances, all of which lead us back to the sense of wisdom as hospitality.

God’s intent for us is to live as though relationships matter most—and we live into that intention when we speak and act with love, trust, joy, and gratitude.

I imagine that when he wrote those words, Paul knew he was not telling the Ephesians things they weren’t already aware of, just as I know I am not talking about things that already happen here. When I think of how we speak to one another in a melody of love I think about those of you who gather on Wednesdays to make prayer shawls and other things, and those of you who come on Fridays to play music together. I think of those who lead our music in the summer so Linda can have her time away. We speak the melody of love when we volunteer to usher and host coffee hour, or the way Anna and Bill share their vegetables.

My favorite example is Anna’s response to the email thread among our church leadership about housing a Liberian children’s choir in our fellowship hall in September. “Of course we should do it,” she said. “That’s what Christians do for each other.”

And we then we actually sing together each Sunday. I am always happy when we select a hymn that evokes a story from you. A lot of hymns do that for me. And, even though we don’t always pick winners, I like it when we sing hymns that are not in our usual repertoire, as Lynda calls it, because they ask us to stretch and learn together.

Since it’s summer and I have my guitar, lets learn one now. Don’t worry—it’s just a chorus that was written by some friends of mine. It is called “All Together,” which feels appropriate for this morning.

all together, sing the song
all together, everyone belongs
together, a family
we are all, all, all, all together

The last thing is to be grateful in the middle of our circumstances. That is easier some days than others, and it is also something we can choose to do. What are some of the ways you cultivate gratitude in your life? Who is this room are you thankful for and why? If we are going to make the most of every opportunity in the short time we walk the planet, letting people know why we love them and are thankful for them ought to be on our list every day.

Let’s sing one more time:

all together, sing the song
all together, everyone belongs
together, a family
we are all, all, all, all together. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

comfort instead of correct

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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0

I spent some time with the prophet Elijah this week, remembering we all need to be nurtured.

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From time to time, it is good to remind ourselves that our Bible is not a single book, but more like an anthology, or collection of books wrapped in a single cover—sixty-six of them, in fact. Like any good anthology, the Bible contains a variety of literature: narratives like the Gospels, songs and poetry like the Psalms, wisdom literature like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, correspondence like the letters to the early churches, and histories like the passage we read this morning from 1 Kings.

1 and 2 Kings tell the history of the Hebrew monarchy from David forward, including the years when it was split into two nations, Israel and Judah. Like history books you may have had in school, these books are full of wars and blood and what we today would call geo-politics. Some chapters read more like movie scripts than what we might expect of scripture. The chapters that precede the verses we read this morning have that kind of cinematic feel.

They tell the story of the prophet Elijah, who lived during the reign of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, monarchs of Israel who used their powers like weapons and treated people like disposable resources to be used up. They were not nice people, to put it mildly, and Elijah sent word to them that God had had enough of their wickedness.

Elijah then had a huge showdown with the prophets of the pagan god Baal, whom Ahab and Jezebel worshipped. Elijah challenged the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal to a contest to see whose deity would send down fire on their respective altars and prove their supremacy.

Once the two altars were prepared, Elijah let the others go first. When no fire appeared, Elijah mocked them. When it was his turn, he got a little cocky and has his helpers douse the altar with water three times—so much water that it ran off the sides and filled the trench around the altar. When he called down the fire from God it came so fiercely that it incinerated everything on the altar including the stones. And then he rounded up all the prophets of Baal and had them executed. (Like I said, more cinematic than spiritual.)

It seems as though Elijah thought that people like Ahab and Jezebel who abused power for their benefit would repent if they faced greater power, but he learned quickly that responding to power or violence with greater power or violence is not a lasting solution—not for long, anyway.

In her anger, Jezebel responded with more violence and sent her soldiers to find him and kill him. In a flash, Elijah went from being a confident conqueror to becoming a frightened fugitive. He ran into the desert and prayed for God to kill him because he felt so alone and defeated. Finally, when he thought he was out of the range of his suitors, he collapsed in exhaustion.

And God sent a messenger who woke him up and gave him food and water.

The messenger didn’t ask, “Why did you run away instead of staying and trusting God to take care of you?” or “This isn’t that big of deal. God will protect you.” or “What did you do to make Jezebel so mad?”

The messenger woke Elijah and said, “Get up and eat,” and offered the prophet freshly baked bread and water. Elijah ate and then went back to sleep. The messenger came a second time with the same message and the same meal, except this time they added, “You have a difficult road ahead of you.” Elijah ate and then went on his journey.

Elijah, as both a prophet and a person, had things he did with confidence and things that paralyzed him. He knew how to call down the presence of God in public places, but when he was by himself he couldn’t stare down his fear.

I have been thinking about him all week, and I even had a pretty good draft of a sermon, but that changed yesterday morning when I took Ginger to the Goose Lane Clinic for her to get her blood drawn. Because of a horrible childhood hospital experience that left her traumatized, Ginger has a deep fear of needles. She had not had her blood drawn in ten years.

I watched and admired her as she prepared for the visit. Over the past couple of weeks, she consulted a counselor who gave her practical exercises to do unfolding her arm to help desensitize her. She went to the clinic and asked to see the room where she would be and talked to them about the person who would be best to do the procedure.

Gil Spencer tells me that I mention Ginger in most every sermon I preach. I know I talk about her a lot. You probably feel like you know her even though she doesn’t get to Hamden often. From the day I first time I met her, I have been impressed by her confidence and forthrightness. This a woman who went to Nigeria to work in a leprosy village as a college student. I have never thought of her as one who carries much fear. But, just as the Bible is an anthology of different kinds of writing, she, like the rest of us, is a multi-layered person who is made up of more than one story.

Over the course of our marriage, I have not always said or done the right thing to help her in moments when the fear is palpable—and I have worked to learn from my mistakes. As we planned out our trip, I thought of the messenger coming to Elijah—“Get up and eat.”—and I tried to pay attention to how I could best support her. As she walked to the car, I had the song she had chosen blaring on the stereo. I went with her into the room with the nurse and handed her a congratulatory fun-size Snickers bar when it was over. And I took her to breakfast, like the messenger said: “Get up and eat.”

You see, this is not a fear I share. I don’t get anxious if I have to have my blood drawn. But just because it is not my fear does not mean it’s not significant. And just because Ginger is confident by nature does not mean she should be able to conquer her fear easily. Life is not that simple; neither are people.

I would not have been much help if I had said, “Oh, it’s not that big of a deal. People get their blood taken all the time.” The best thing I did was to take her seriously—to pay attention before I took action or said anything.

As I watched her get through the morning Elijah’s story took on some new layers for me, particularly in what God’s messenger said and did. When we see someone else who is hurting, or frightened, or depleted by life, we do our best work when we don’t see those moments as teaching moments, but as nourishing moments instead. When we are worn out or anxious, we don’t need advice, we need companionship. We don’t need people to tell us what to do, we need people to listen rather than dismiss, who nurture instead of discount. People don’t become less afraid or less exhausted because they were told to get over it.

In the anthology of stories that make up our lives together, we all have a difficult road ahead. May we look at one another through God’s lens of love so that we, like the messenger, offer compassion and care that comfort rather than correct. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

morning by morning . . .

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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The story this week was the Hebrew people complaining about life and God answering with breakfast.

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Yesterday marked eleven years since my father died.

There are ways in which it feels like yesterday and then ways in which it seems like so much life has gone by between then and now. In his honor—well, because he gave me a good excuse—I had a hot dog for lunch. I also loved that as I was working on this sermon one of the jokes he told (and retold) came to mind. In his honor, I will offer it to you.

A young man felt a calling to join a monastery and pledged himself to a life of silence. He was only allowed to speak once every five years when the Abbott called him in for a conference, and even then he was only to say one sentence.
At five years, the Abbott asked him if everything was alright and the monk said, “The mattress is lumpy.” So they gave him a new mattress. At ten years, when asked about his life, he said, “My sandals are worn out.” So they gave him new sandals. At fifteen years, he said, “My room is cold,” and the Abbott replied, “I think we are going to have to let you go. All you have done since you got here is complain.”

Thanks, Dad.

The writer of Exodus makes the Hebrew people sound like that monk. After being freed from generations of oppression, rather than singing songs of joy and gratitude, they complained about their conditions, mostly because they were hungry. Desperately hungry, it seems—to the point that they said, “Maybe we would have been better off dying as enslaved people in Egypt. At least there we had something to eat.”

They were so focused on their hunger, on their desperation, on the reality that they were on a journey without a map, that they starved their gratitude.

I say they, but it wasn’t as if everyone was saying the same thing. Assuming that groups of people speak in unison is not only inaccurate but a little dangerous as well. We must keep reminding ourselves that groups speak with more than one voice. We open ourselves to misunderstanding if we think Democrats think this, or Republicans think that; Israelis all say one thing and Palestinians all say something else.

But there was discord in the community. What people shared in common was that they were struggling. Life wasn’t going the way they wanted, or the way they had hoped. And they were still new at being free. They had only been gone from Egypt for a month. Even though scripture refers to them as Israelites, they were years away from becoming an actual nation. They didn’t even have the Ten Commandments yet. In this part of the story, they were people united in their faith and frustration, and the frustration had the upper hand. They couldn’t see beyond where they were and what they did not have. What they could do was complain.

And God heard their complaints and responded by sending that word through Moses and Aaron to say exactly that: “Tell them I have heard their complaints.” Not tell them I’m tired of hearing about it, or tell them to count their blessings, or tell them they are in big trouble. Just, “Tell them I have heard them.”

Then God responded those complaints by saying, “Every morning it will rain bread and every evening birds will just come and sit in the camp so that everyone can eat. But,” God said, “I want to see if they can follow instructions.” Those were that each person or family should only collect what food they needed for that day and trust that there would be more to come.

That evening, birds settled in the camp and provided meat for dinner. The next morning, the ground looked like it was covered with a heavy dew, but then that evaporated leaving thin flakes of something that turned out to be bread, but bread like they had never seen. They tasted it and asked each other, “What is it?” Turns out the Hebrew word for that question is manna.

Moses answered them by saying, “It’s what God has given you.”

The daily routine did two things. First, it fed everyone—it answered the complaints. Second, it redirected the vision of the people.

They had gotten in the habit of complaining to the point that they couldn’t see beyond their circumstances. They were only a month away from having been enslaved and they had gotten to the place where they woke up every morning and all they could see was what was wrong—and there was a lot wrong. They had good reason to complain. The problem was they couldn’t see anything else.

When God said, “I’ll test them to see whether or not they follow my instruction,” perhaps it wasn’t so much that God wanted to see if they would be compliant, but that God wanted to change the way they looked at their lives one day at a time.

Though the story is told as though this was one incident, the bread and birds continued until they were ready to enter into Canaan and settle down. For years they woke up and looked out to see the ground covered in grace, and each evening they closed out their days with the same message. They were still in the desert, they were still without a permanent home, they were still struggling, and, as we will sing in a few moments, morning by morning new mercies they saw—if they were willing to see them as they traveled.

Poet David Whyte has a poem called “Learning to Walk” that gives a glimpse, perhaps, of what it was like to step out and see the ground covered in grace.

Walked out this morning
into a broad green garden
with the rising sun in my eyes
and the first hint of the day’s
heat touching my face,
feeling as broad as the garden
and young as the day
and soaking up the heat
in my black tee-shirt,
walked straight forward
out of the gate,
through the wood,
along the river,
toward the mountain
and thought of the future
I could make in the world
if I walked toward it
like this,
with my face toward the hills
and my eyes full of light
and the earth sure
and solid beneath me,
walking on
with a fierce anticipation,
and a faithful expectation,
with the sun and the rain
and the wind on my skin . . .

We may not be stuck in the desert, but we are susceptible to what we allow to dominate how we see our world and ourselves. Hear me clearly: I am not talking glass-half-full or glass-half empty. Optimism and hope are not the same thing. Things don’t always work out. Pain isn’t always resolved. Life is hard and it hurts. And, if we wake up looking for grace, there’s a good chance we will find it, even in the middle of the hard stuff.

Morning by morning new mercies we see. May we think of the future we could make in the world if we walked toward it like that. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

how do we get through this?

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1

I preached this sermon at the end of a long week and the stories wound together.

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A couple of weeks ago, Ginger was helping Lizzy!, our little blind Schnoodle, find her way outside from our kitchen. Lizzy! got down the stairs to the patio on her own, but then she had to turn either right or left to find a way around the small stone wall that separates the patio from the back yard. She didn’t turn. As she got close to the stones, Ginger yelled, “Walls,” and Lizzy! turned away, only to almost walk into another section. “More walls,” Ginger yelled, and she and I both started laughing. Then Ginger said, “Well, that’s going to show up in somebody’s sermon.”

When I got to this scripture about the wind blowing so hard that the disciples couldn’t cross the lake, I knew she was right. I pictured Jesus walking toward the little boat yelling, “Wind!”

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We have spent the month of July reading through Mark 6 together. We started with Jesus and the disciples returning to his hometown of Nazareth where people were astounded at first, but then became belligerent and unwilling to let him grow up. Then we saw how Jesus sent them out in pairs to build relationships wherever they could and to move on from the places and the people where they could not. Last week we read the story of Jesus’ big garden party—a meal for over 5000 people that started with the disciples saying they didn’t have eight months of wages to cater the dinner and Jesus showing them there was enough to go around.

They were tired. Jesus was tired. He wanted some time to himself to pray and reflect and he wanted them to get some rest, so he told them to take a boat back to the other side of the lake and he would meet them there. When they finally got in the boat and out in the water—a place they knew well—the headwinds were so strong that they spent all night rowing and couldn’t get to the other shore. It was getting close to dawn. The disciples were working hard. They were doing what they knew to do. Several of them had fished for a living. They knew about boats and wind and water, but on that night it didn’t matter. They were stuck. And tired.

When I imagine the conversations that might have taken place that night, I hear at least one of their voices asking, “How are we going to get through this?”

Perhaps I pictured them that way because it is a question I have been asking this week. I told you a couple of Sundays ago that my audiologist had recommended I pursue a cochlear implant because of the severity of my hearing loss. Ginger and I met with a surgeon who concurred. I have felt hopeful about this process, even though it is going to be a significant change. It seems like that offers me a chance for life to be very different that it has for the last twelve or fourteen years.

Last Wednesday I went for another battery of tests that were the penultimate step before we meet again with surgeon to set the date for me to get a new ear.

For about two hours I repeated words and sounds and sentences as best I could. After the test I learned I had done too well. It wasn’t so much that my hearing had improved as it was I figured out a lot of the sentences from the context, so I scored too high for my insurance to approve the implant. I was devasted. I felt like I hit a wall of wind like the disciples.

I was immobilized by my despair for most of the day wondering, “How am I going to get through this?”

I understood what it felt like to be in that boat. But then something happened to them that did not happen to me. They saw someone walking toward them on the water. He was not bothered by the wind. He didn’t even seem to be coming to where they were. They thought it was a ghost at first and screamed, and then realized it was Jesus and called out in fear and desperation.

Jesus got in the boat, the wind died down, and they got to the other side. The disciples were amazed, but still confused. The gospel writer said they still didn’t understand about the loaves even though they had gotten through it.

The Lesson of the Loaves was not a parable Jesus had told. Jesus never said, “Here’s what the loaves mean,” to them or to us. But look back at the story again. Jesus told them to feed the people and the disciples said, “We don’t have enough money to do that,” which I hear as another version of “How are we going to get through this?”

And Jesus asked, “How many loaves do you have?”

They gave him the loaves that they had and when the meal was over there was more than enough for everyone. They had gotten through it.

As for me, late Wednesday night I sent an email to all three of my doctors telling them how I felt about what had happened with the test. It didn’t change anything, but it at least gave me something tangible that I could do. Thursday afternoon I heard from my audiologist saying she understood and asked me to come in for more testing this coming week. It doesn’t mean I am going to get the implant, but it does mean the story is not over.

I got through it. I found enough to keep going. I felt like I had to learn the lesson of the loaves.

Let me be clear: I don’t mean the lesson of the loaves is, “Just hang in there and everything will work out for everyone,” because everything doesn’t always work out. Sometimes the boat sinks. Sometimes people go hungry. I still may not qualify for my implant.

I am not saying that when God closes a door, God opens a window. Sometimes doors close because they need to be shut, and most of the time God is not the one closing them. God didn’t make those people get hungry in the middle of that pasture or set the wind against the disciples just to teach them a lesson, any more than God inflicted me with profound hearing loss.

And that brings me to Gladys Knight and the Pips. (I mean, the connection is obvious, don’t you think?)

Last Sunday evening when word came that President Biden was not going to seek reelection, I was stunned by his news, but what disheartened me was how some of his political adversaries responded with attacking words rather than show the slightest compassion for what must have been a difficult decision. That was another night that I asked, “How are we going to get through this?”

I kept hearing an old song by Gladys Knight and the Pips. The opening lines say,

I’ve just got to use my imagination
to think of a reason to keep on keeping on.

Maybe Motown is not where you look for inspiration, but it spoke to me, in part because when I hear the word imagination as a sibling to the word image—as in the image of God in which we were created. The Spirit of God is imagination: the eyes to see beyond the limits and fears of the moment.

Can you see the imagination of Jesus in response to the disciples saying the had no money? He took a sack lunch and started sharing and invited a hillside full of people to join the party. And then he came walking across the water because his disciples still couldn’t hear the music.

We have so much inviting us to despair. I’ve already mentioned our political climate. Friday I saw the video of a police officer shooting a woman named Sonya Massey as she stood in her kitchen. The death toll in Gaza is almost 50,000. The people of Ukraine and Sudan are suffering from wars in their countries. And those are only three of the almost one hundred wars around the globe. We have all kinds of reasons to keep yelling, “Walls!” and putting up our defenses.

So, how do we get through this?

How do we imagine life beyond our fear and pain, beyond our confusion and concern? How do we trust the lesson of the loaves—trust that God is with us and we are with each other and that is enough, even when things stay tough?

We live in important days, days that feel critical, maybe they even feel like the world has never been this bad. May we be imaginative enough to remember that we are not the most important people who have ever lived, or the most troubled, we are just the latest ones. I am not the first one to ever have been denied medical care because my insurance wouldn’t cover it any more than the people on that hillside were the first to be hungry or the disciples were the first sailors to get caught by the wind.

We belong to a legacy of love, a lineage of people who got through it because they trusted that the love of God never let go, of people who imagined that love was enough—and got through it. May we go and do likewise. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

join the party

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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0

My sermon this week looked at a very familiar story—Jesus feeding over five thousand people with a sack lunch—and what new things I noticed in it.

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One of the (many) books I have on my shelf is one called The Art of Noticing by a man named Rob Walker, and it is exactly what the title says: it is a book about learning how to notice things, how to pay better attention. Most of the book is filled with exercises designed to help you notice what you might not have seen before, and often those exercises have to do with paying attention to the things that you see and do over and over.

One exercise says to take the same walk every day for at least a week. Go down the same streets, make the same turns, but focus on something different each time. Look at the differences in the barks on the trees, and then notice the cracks in the sidewalks, or the front doors of the houses you pass.

That particular exercise fascinates me because of how often I see something and I think, “I’ve walked by that place and I’ve never noticed that before.” When was a youth minister in Texas I walked into our church sanctuary one day while the organist was practicing. She had been at the church for over twenty years at that time; the sanctuary was only a decade old. She motioned for me to come over and she pointed to the large stained glass window in front of her.

“What do you see?” she asked.

I stared at the window for a couple of minutes, knowing I was supposed to notice something unusual. Finally, in the top bar that ran across the window, I saw a roll of painter’s tape sitting on its side.

She smiled and said, “That’s been there since the first Sunday we moved into this room and I’m the only one who has ever noticed it.”

Well, my experience with this week’s scripture was a little looking at that window. I have both heard and preached a number of sermons on what we have come to call the Feeding of the Five Thousand. It is the only story of Jesus’ life that shows up in all four gospels, outside of those events leading up to his crucifixion, which means it shows up in every lectionary cycle, which means you’ve probably heard a bunch of sermons, too.

In the years since my father died, I have read it mostly as a grief story, or I should say a story that takes place in the wake of grief. Right before Jesus fed the crowd, John the Baptist was beheaded. Jesus kept trying to get away by himself and the crowd kept following to the point that they needed to be fed. Jesus was caught in the tension between the death of someone he dearly loved and the needs of those around him. From that angle, the story has been a meaningful one for me.

Mark tells about John’s death in the verses right before the ones we read this morning, but he doesn’t say anything about anyone telling Jesus what had happened. Instead, he says the disciples returned from their paired-up journeys with stories to tell. Jesus invited them to get out of town for a little rest and relaxation, so they took a boat across the Sea of Galilee.

The ”sea” was small enough that the crowd following them could run around the edge and meet them on the other side, which they did, but that meant they were all on the other side of the lake from the more inhabited parts, out in the middle of a field. Jesus was enjoying the chance to teach them because he could tell they were kind of lost trying to figure out how to deal with life—like a sheep without a shepherd, Mark said.

The disciples were more concerned with it being dinner time and they didn’t know where the food was going to come from, much less how they were going to pay for it, and they made that known to Jesus. He asked what food they could find and they came up with five loaves and two fish. (No little boy in Mark’s version.) And then comes the part I had not noticed before.

Jesus told them to tell the people to recline like they were getting ready for dinner, that is dinner inside. To act like they were settling in at the dinner table. Except they were in the middle of a field of green grass—which is the second thing that struck me: they weren’t out in the desert; they were in a rich pasture. And then he told them to get in groups of fifty or a hundred. The Greek word there has to do with being at an outside party or banquet.

All the language abounds with hospitality in response to the disciples’ sense of scarcity. They were holding five loaves of bread and a couple of fish and Jesus was saying, “Tell everyone to get ready for a big garden party.”

What Mark described in a couple of sentences had to have taken a while. The disciples moved through the crowd telling the people to group up because the party was about to start. I wonder if that is what set the miracle in motion. Jesus blessed the food he had and the disciples started handing it out, but after noticing all the different ways Jesus talked about hospitality, I wonder if folks began pulling out what they had to share and the party really started. Whatever happened, everybody ate well and they even had leftovers. I have always noticed that part because I was raised to notice meal time.

Right before my family moved back to the States from Africa permanently, my mother said, “Our lives are about to change dramatically. What is it about what we do as a family that you would most want to keep when we get to America?”

My brother and I both said, “Having dinner together.”

My mother made a big deal out of any meal. If we were having peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, she would take the time to scoop the stuff out of the jars and into a serving bowl and invite us all to the table. Even a quick snack could be made memorable.

When we got to Houston and my brother and I immersed ourselves in American high school life, my mother worked around schedules so we all sat down to eat together. In my twenties, when I felt distant, even estranged, from my parents the leftovers of those meals were the memories that kept me connected, even when I didn’t know how to say so.

Eventually, we found our way back to each other and the stories around the table continued.

One of the ways to notice the words we say at the Communion table—“As often as you do this, remember me”—is that Jesus wasn’t just talking about the sacrament but meant anytime we gather to share food we put ourselves back together in Jesus’ name. We are invited to hear Jesus’ words of invitation and anticipation—act like it’s about to be a banquet—whether we are sharing Communion, eating lunch at Luce’s, enjoying our snacks at Coffee Hour, or heating up leftovers.

Remember that the disciples had just come back from their travels where Jesus had sent them out and told them to stay where they were welcomed and to move on if they were not. And now they stood in the middle of a green field watching Jesus tell five thousand people they had a place at the table, even when it looked like there wasn’t enough to go around.

There’s always enough love to go around.

I hope we keep noticing that—and joining the party—over and over again. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

just stand there

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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The passage that informed my sermon this week tells of Jesus sending his disciples out in pairs, rather than just following him. It was their first such venture, and it still speaks.

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When I was a high school English teacher, I did an exercise with my ninth graders where they had to write instructions for how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I had all the elements out on a table: jars of peanut butter and jelly, a couple of knives, a loaf of bread still in the wrapper, a plate. One of the main reasons behind the activity was to get them to understand the importance of details, so I told them to make sure and write down every little thing you had to do to make a PB & J.

What I didn’t tell them was the was that the way the assignment would be evaluated was how well one of the other students could make a sandwich by following their directions because they could only do what was written on the paper. It became apparent rather quickly that no one had thought of details like open the bag and take out two slices of bread, I gave their instructions back to them for revision.

We all learned that directions are hard to write.

Whenever we come across a passage where Jesus gives instructions to his disciples, it is tempting to read his words as though he was offering a sort of User’s Manual for all of us. There are parts of scripture that read that way—the Ten Commandments, for instance—but even they don’t have all the details for exactly how we live out those ideals.

In our passage today, Mark recounts the first time Jesus sent his followers out on their own. Remember, this is a continuation of the scene we looked at last week when Jesus couldn’t get his hometown folks to take him seriously. He decided to move on to other places and he told his disciples to do the same, except to do it without him.

And he gave some instructions, which we read a few moments ago. I want to read them again, this time from The Message translation:

“Don’t think you need a lot of extra equipment for this. You are the equipment. No special appeals for funds. Keep it simple. And no luxury inns. Get a modest place and be content there until you leave. If you’re not welcomed, not listened to, quietly withdraw. Don’t make a scene. Shrug your shoulders and be on your way.”

The reason Jesus’ words reminded me of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches is because I found several sermons that tried to turn his words into a little instruction book. One preacher made a connection to Robert Fulghum’s All I Really Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten. Remember that book? The author took things we learned as kids and talked about how they applied to our lives, such as, “Share everything. Play fair. Put things back where you found them. Take a nap every afternoon. And when you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.”

Those words hold a lot of truth, and I am a huge fan of naps, but life doesn’t come with easy-to-follow instructions when it comes to how to live meaningfully—or perhaps it’s better to say the instructions are a starting point.

Jesus does give instructions, as did our kindergarten teachers, but he wasn’t offering a step-by-step manual of how to change the world, or even how to be a disciple. He was inviting them into a deeper understanding of what it means to love one another, whether those one anothers were people they knew or people they had just met. And so he told them to put themselves in positions where they needed the help of others, even as they were going out to try and help; to live within their means; and to meet people on their terms. If they didn’t want to engage, then give them space and move on.

He challenged them to be guests rather than experts, to act just as he had just done in Nazareth. Instead of a list of instructions, he told them to go and build relationships, to engage other people on their terms.

That’s as close as you can get, I suppose, for instructions on how to love someone: meet them on their terms and offer what you have. As The Message translated it, “You are the equipment.”

Those words made me think of the Platinum Rule, which I learned about from Ginger. The Golden Rule, as most of us have been taught, is to do to others as we would have it done to us. The Platinum Rule says do to others as they would have it done to them. Use them as the reference point rather than ourselves. Listen to them before we decide what they need.

Perhaps that is doing as we would have it done to us, in a way, since we would like to feel listened to and regarded.

Theologian Sam Wells says that often, when we think about how to care for others we think about what we can do for them. “And,” he says, “those gestures of ‘for’ matter because they sum up a whole life in which we try to make relationships better, try to make the world better, try to be better people ourselves by doing things ‘for’ people.”

But for is not the key word in the way God relates to us. When the angel tells Joseph what to name the child, they say to call him Emmanuel, which means “God with us.” “’With’,” says Wells, “is the most fundamental thing about God. . . . It is the word that describes the heart of God and the nature of God’s purpose and destiny for us.”

Jesus sent the disciples out to be with people, not just to go do stuff for them. And with is harder than for. We want to feel productive and useful, to be able to see how we helped. But sometimes the best thing we can do is to follow what the White Rabbit told Alice in Alice in Wonderland: “Don’t just do something, stand there!”

I first heard that line from my supervisor when I was a fresh-out-of-seminary hospital chaplain intern at Baylor Medical Center in Dallas. I had gone from the classroom to being in hospital rooms with dying patients and families. I didn’t know what to do and my supervisor reminded me I couldn’t do anything but stand there. Just be with people. Even when I couldn’t fix it, I could choose to stay. That is true beyond the hospital. Even when we can’t fix it, we can choose to stay. We can choose to be with each other, no matter how much it hurts and how helpless we feel.

But I am not telling you something you don’t know.

As I thought about Jesus sending out the disciples, I kept thinking, “That is kind of what we do every Sunday. We got out from here into the lives of those around us to see how we can be with them, and then we come back here to remember we are with each other.” You have been with each other for a lot more Sundays than I have been here.

I’m not telling you something you don’t know, but it’s worth being reminded that the way love changes lives is in our being with one another, is in our being together. God is with us and we are with each other. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

room to grow

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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3

In Robert Frost’s poem “Death of the Hired Man,” one of the characters says,

Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.

That line came to mind as I read about Jesus’ return to Nazareth, his hometown, and left me wondering how we make room for one another to grow and change.

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One of the things in my life with which I have a mixed relationship is the autocorrect on my phone and my computer. Maybe this happens to you as well. I send a text message only to find out—after I sent it—that what I thought I typed and what the computer predicted I really wanted to say weren’t the same thing. Sometimes it’s a funny mistake, sometimes it might be a little embarrassing, and most of the time it doesn’t make sense.

The technology is designed to recognize patterns in my words. It thinks it knows what I want to say and doesn’t make room for me to say something different. That’s not always helpful, but it does offer a good metaphor as we look at the scene from Jesus’ life that we just read together.

On the heels of healing the woman who had hemorrhaged for twelve years and raising a twelve-year-old girl from the dead, Jesus went back to his hometown of Nazareth, where he spoke in the synagogue. We don’t know how fast news travelled back then or what folks had heard, but it doesn’t appear that a big crowd had followed Jesus home. Just his disciples.

Mark, Matthew, and Luke all offer different accounts of Jesus’ return home. In Luke, it happened immediately after Jesus was tempted in the wilderness. Matthew describes the scene happening after Jesus had told several parables. Mark places it after Jesus had raised the little girl. What the three accounts share is that the people in Nazareth responded in two ways: first, they were powerfully struck by what (and who) they were hearing, and then they fell back into their preconceived notions of who Jesus was: “Isn’t he the carpenter’s boy? When did he get to be a big shot? We know his family.”

(Mark also gives us a brief glimpse of Jesus’ family. He identifies four brothers and then says he had sisters, so Jesus was the oldest of at least seven. They don’t show up anywhere else.)

Mark’s order of events is interesting because Jesus had just come from giving two people new leases on life, offering them the chance to see possibilities, only to have the people in Nazareth confine him with their assumptions about who he had become because of their memory of who he was.

They couldn’t let Jesus grow up, or. perhaps, they wouldn’t. As a result, Mark says, Jesus couldn’t do much. The gospel says he was amazed at their lack of trust.

The whole scene creates a picture kind of like going back to a high school or college reunion where who we were then is not who we are now. Maybe we heard an old nickname that we were happy to discard or were reminded of things we did that we have outgrown.

Or maybe it brings to mind a situation where we felt trapped in a job or a responsibility because people put us where they thought we belonged rather than asking, or we were never considered for the promotion because “we were so good right where we were.”

Maybe it’s not quite that dramatic, but we wish people would look beyond the person they think they know and give us a chance to paint a fuller picture of ourselves. You might be surprised to know, for example, I am an award-winning dancer.

(I’ll be you didn’t see that coming.)

A few years back, Ginger and I were asked to be a part of a Gala of Stars: Dancing for a Cause for Raise the Roof, a nonprofit on the Shoreline that raises money for New Haven Habitat for Humanity. We won the fundraising award and placed second in dancing; we lost by a point. Therefore, I am an award-winning dancer.

One of the reasons I love coffee hour is we get to hear each other’s stories; we have a chance to be amazed by each other as we learn things we didn’t know. The people in Nazareth asked lousy questions in response to being struck by Jesus’ sermon. Rather than asking, “Isn’t that the carpenter’s kid?” they would have done better to wonder what had happened to him since they had seen him last—and not just because he might have been able to do miracles, but also because they could have helped him feel at home.

When I was teaching high school English in Winchester, Massachusetts there was a boy who sat on the back row and never said a word. He did his work, and he didn’t cause trouble, but he seemed disengaged. I tried several things to connect, but they were my ideas; I didn’t ask him much of anything. One of his classmates invited me to watch the lacrosse team play and it was there I learned he played also—and he played well. He was a leader on the field, vocal and passionate. When the game was over, I went up to him and said, “I don’t know who the guy is that sits in the back of the room, but I would love for you to come to class. You’re amazing.”

And he did.

When I was willing to see him differently, I gave him a chance to be different.

I realize that story makes it sound as though I have had more training and teachers who helped me evolve more than the people of Nazareth, but that is not my point. I also have stories of situations where I was not quite as aware, and they remind me that, though Mark’s account makes them easy to criticize, we might do better to ask ourselves what we share in common with them and how we can grow.

How are we making room for one another to show sides of ourselves no one is expecting? Are we creating a community that gives people a safe place to be themselves? Since many of you have known each other a long time, those might sound like odd questions, but sometimes those with whom we are most familiar are the hardest ones to see with fresh eyes. We tend to autocorrect each other if we are not intentional about how we listen to and learn about how we are all growing and changing.

One of the roles rituals play is to remind us that we are still growing. Think of the shared meals at this Communion table like pencil marks on the doorframes of our lives, as we come each month to re-member ourselves in Jesus name. Who were we when we last gathered? What has happened? What new sorrows have shaped us? What new joys have found us? What has changed our view of the world and who we are called to be in it? How are we going to go from this place to help each other grow in love in the days to come? How will we grow in our trust in God and in one another?

Let us hold these questions as we keep the feast. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

do not pass me by

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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0

I was back in the pulpit at Mount Carmel Congregational Church this past Sunday after my time away in and around Belfast. I am grateful I get to be in both places. Here is what I found at the crossroads.

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Since I just got back from Ireland where I was the chef for two peace retreats, I assume you are expecting I would have stories to tell, and I don’t want to disappoint you. My trips there over the last three summers have given me an experience I have not had before when I have travelled, and that is being able to spend extended time in the same place more than once. If I add up all my trips, I have spent about eight weeks in Belfast and the surrounding area.

As a result, my memories have become increasingly more about people because I have had the chance to be around them more than once. The place I have visited the most is called The Larder. Here is how they describe themselves:

The Larder is a community food hub in East Belfast that believes everyone deserves good food. Our members can shop with us weekly, purchasing high quality produce for affordable prices.

They are housed in a church building that was deconsecrated by the Church of Ireland but was then resurrected by The Larder and by St. Christopher’s, the faith community from which it was born. And it began not as an idea, but as a response to a tangible request: a woman who had just moved into the neighborhood came by asking for food because she was desperate and hungry. They met a need with love in a tangible way that created trust.

And trust is at the heart of our scripture passage this morning that intertwines two stories that are otherwise unconnected, other than both people came looking for Jesus. It starts with a man called Jairus, who was a leader at the synagogue, found Jesus in the middle of a crowd and begged him to come to his house because his twelve-year-old daughter was dying.

Jesus changed whatever plans he had and went with him.

So did the crowd. And in that crowd was a woman who had been dealing with some sort of hemorrhaging for twelve years—she had been sick as long as the little girl had been alive. She had spent many of those years seeking medical attention, but things had only gotten worse. The gospel said, “She had heard about Jesus,” and so she braved the crowd to get close enough just to touch his clothes, trusting that the contact would change things.

When she did, Jesus stopped, which must have made Jarius’ heart sink.

“Who touched me?” Jesus asked.

And I love the way the disciples responded. “We’re in the middle of a giant crowd and you want to know who touched you? Everybody touched you! That’s what a crowd is.”

But Jesus kept scanning the crowd until his eyes caught hers. The gospel says she came forward in fear, but Jesus affirmed the trust she showed in her touch. “You’re faith has restored you.”

No sooner had Jesus spoken those words than another religious leader came to say Jairus’ daughter had died and Jesus needn’t bother coming to the house. Jesus looked at Jairus and said, “Keep trusting me,” and they kept moving. When they got to the house, the yard was filled with mourners, but Jesus reframed the situation: “She has not died, she is sleeping.”

He took her hand and said, “Talitha koum,” which means, “Little girl, wake up,” and she did. And Jesus told them to feed her.

The talk of food takes me back to The Larder.

When you walk into the room that was once a sanctuary, about a third of it is set up like a small grocery store. There is a wall of shelves holding various canned goods, another with a bank of canisters holding bulk dry goods like rice and lentils, some other shelves holding bins of fresh produce as well as eggs, and a table with dried herbs and spices. The back end of the sanctuary, or what was once the chancel, is storage and office space, and in between is a small kitchen and a number of tables and chairs.

Volunteers make food for those who are coming to shop, much like we do for coffee hour, and there is coffee and tea. People don’t stand in line. They sit and talk and snack until it’s their turn to shop. I sat down to talk to a woman because she had the cutest little girl who kept waving at me. They were new to Belfast, having moved from Derry a couple of months before.

“I heard about The Larder, so I came for help, and they have helped me” she said. And they gave her something to eat and a place to belong. The Larder is not solving all the problems of her life, but they are making her feel seen and they are helping her find hope.

In another conversation, someone was talking about a loved one who had been diagnosed with cancer and they said, also with some hope, “It’s treatable, but not curable.”

Those words continued to ring in my ears as I read our stories for today where both women, young and old, were healed. The older woman’s bleeding stopped; the little girl got up from her deathbed and had lunch. And they both went on to whatever the rest of their lives held until they died.

Life, it seems, is treatable but not curable. We all need to be seen, to be noticed and cared for in a way that helps us trust that Love does not let us go.

Because of my trip, I had to put the order of service together about a month ago. As I did, the song that kept coming to mind was “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior,” which I am going to sing in a moment. It was one of the earliest hymns written by Fanny Crosby, who went blind when she was six weeks old. She later taught at the New York School for the Blind and was involved in many ministries. This hymn grew out of a visit to a prison where she heard one of the prisoners plead, “Good Lord, do not pass me by.”

It could be the theme song for both Jairus and the woman whose name we never know; it could be the theme song for most anyone we know, depending on the situation. Part of what I love about the song is the plea is not resolved, and by that I mean that we are left to trust that God will answer, that Love will show up in a touch, or a word, or a meal. And we have to pay attention, because sometimes we are the ones who the agents of God’s love, who are reaching out, offering words of encouragement, and feeding those who are hungry so that they are not passed by.

Pass me not, O gentle Savior, hear my humble cry
While on others thou art calling do not pass me by

Savior, Savior, hear my humble cry
While on others Thou art calling do not pass me by

Thou the spring of all my comfort more than life to me
Whom have I on earth beside thee? Whom in heav’n but thee?

I’m calling Savior, Savior, hear my humble cry
While on others Thou art calling do not pass me by

Amen.

Peace,
Milton

PS–I know lots of folks are meeting the needs in front of their faces, much like the folks at the Larder. I also know all of them need help. Please check out what they are doing in East Belfast. If you would like to contribute, you can do it here.

One more thing: here’s an old video of me singing “Pass Me Not” as a mashup with REM’s “Eveerybody Hurts.”

under repair

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1

One of my favorite things to do, particularly now as spring is here, is to take the long way back to Guilford as I go home. I meander down Highway 22, through Northford and North Branford, winding through farms and houses, and I have also gotten into the habit of stopping at the Defrancesco Farm stand to get duck eggs. When the granddaughter of the family is at the register, she even tells me the names of the ducks who laid the eggs.

Just before I get to Route 80, I pass a big open field. In about six weeks or so, it will be brimming with sunflowers that feel like they go on forever. Ginger, Rachel, and I have made a small tradition of driving up there when they are in full bloom and wandering out into the field to take pictures of each other in the middle of them.

A friend in Guilford told me the farmer plants them because his wife loves them—and she has breast cancer. That field is a tangible statement of hope. I don’t have any way to verify the story, but it rings true, and it harmonizes with the heart of our scripture passage this morning where Paul says,

But this beautiful treasure is contained in us—cracked pots made of earth and clay—so that the transcendent character of this power will be clearly seen as coming from God and not from us. We are cracked and chipped from our afflictions on all sides, but we are not crushed by them. We are bewildered at times, but we do not give in to despair. We are persecuted, but we have not been abandoned. We have been knocked down, but we are not destroyed. We always carry around in our bodies the reality of the brutal death and suffering of Jesus. As a result, Christ’s resurrection life rises and reveals its wondrous power in our bodies as well. For while we live, we are constantly handed over to death on account of Jesus so that his life may be revealed even in our mortal bodies of flesh. So death is constantly at work in us, but life is working in you.

Death is constantly at work in us, but life is working in you.

Those words have been ringing in my ears all week.

It is a truism, bordering on a cliché, to say what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, that the hard things in life make us stronger at the broken places. Clichés become clichés because they hold some truth, but they lose value when we forget that truth has lots of layers. Life is not defined easily; neither is pain or even joy. Paul described us as those who carry the image of God in “broken pots of clay,” which is a rich and beautiful metaphor unless, perhaps, you are feeling particularly broken. Then it may be hard to hear, even if it is true.

As we talk about this, it’s important to remind ourselves that the pain we experience in life is not intended to be an object lesson. God does not inflict us with tragedy or hardship or grief to teach us something. The things that leave us broken didn’t happen just to get our attention. They are part of what it means to be human, to be alive.

Life is difficult. Life hurts. And life is beautiful and joyous.

When I read Paul’s words about being broken clay pots, it reminded me of the Japanese art of Kintsugi, which means “join with gold.” (And I hope I said it right.) It is a method of repairing broken pottery or glass but binding the pieces together with gold lacquer, creating something that is not simply repaired but made beautiful by the way it is mended.

One of the central ideas behind it is to fix the broken thing rather than just throw it away. Another is the idea of “wabi-sabi,” which is accepting that impermanence and imperfection are inevitable parts of our world. Wabi means “less is more,” and sabi means “attentive melancholy,” which is an interesting phrase to me because it feels almost like an oxymoron: attentive melancholy. We can hold both the significance and the sadness of our lives at once.

Again, that’s sometimes easier said than done, and that is because of a couple of things. One is that healing or repair is not an instantaneous thing. I would imagine those who practice the art of Kintsugi take a long time to put those bowls back together again. So it is with our healing. We don’t just get over things. It takes time.

And it takes others. We can’t repair ourselves; we need help. We need others to pick up pieces, to be the adhesive that repairs, to offer the love that heals. We are both the wounded ones and the healers. Paul said, “Death is at work in us, but life is working in you.” Depending on the circumstance, we inhabit both sides of that story. We live—together—in a continual state or repair because none of us gets broken only once.

Lastly, let us remember that healing does not mean making it go back to how it was before. We can’t go back. Damage done is damage done, but that damage, like most everything in life, is not permanent. Something comes after it.

The first tattoo I got was this semi-colon on my right forearm. I had it done soon after my father died. As I have told you, I live with depression. After Dad died, I had a hard time. Somewhere during those days, I learned about Project Semi-Colon, an organization begun by a woman who attempted to take her own life and failed. In the aftermath, she saw the semi-colon as a symbol that meant the sentence was not yet over. There was more to come.

The word repair means “to make ready again,” however long it takes. That also means we understand that when we are called to be the ones aiding in repair, we need to be prepared to hang in there for a good long while. The old nursery rhyme says all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again. Maybe they just gave up too soon.

We are called to do our best to not let that be the end of any of our stories. And that is the truth of which we remind ourselves each time we come to the Communion table: We are here to remember—to put ourselves back together in Jesus’ name, to heal one another, to repair the bonds between us, so that we can carry love in our lives. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

let your life preach

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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2

If you were looking for a sermon that includes a Hebrew prophet, seraphs, clams, and homemade pizza, you just found it.

_________________________

I did something on Friday I had never done before: I went clamming.

A man in the Guilford church named Charlie has talked to me about going for a while, but Friday around noon I got a text that was more specific inviting me to join him at low tide late that afternoon. I had to move quickly to get a license at the town hall and gather a few items he told me to bring, and then I drove out to the end of Trolley Road to begin my adventure.

A brief summary of what I did includes walking through soft mud where I almost got stuck, negotiating some rocky ground as well, raking and raking and raking, and finding a bunch of clams.

One of the big reasons I went, along with the fact that I love clams and I love doing new things, was that Charlie loves clamming and talks about it all the time. (And let me apologize in advance for this next statement.) He is a Clamvangelist. I wanted to go because he loves it so much.

Last night we had clams for dinner. When I say we, I mean Todd and I ate clams. Ginger and Rachel aren’t clam eaters. I made a clam pizza as well as stuffed clams. We ate well. (I also made a hamburger and black olive pizza for Ginger.) In the conversation after dinner, I said I needed to get back to my sermon, but before I did, I wondered how they would preach on this passage. I mean, I had two other clergy at the table; why miss the chance to get the extra input?

We talked our way through the story: Isaiah saw God sitting on a throne and the train of God’s robes filled up the whole Temple. I said I pictured an actress or model at one of those events where everyone dresses in designer gowns and one has a train that goes all the way down the steps. God was surrounded by serpahs—some sort of multi-winged angel that was on fire. That’s what the word seraph means: burning thing. And they had six wings. And they shouted so loudly they shook the place.

And the whole scene appeared to be set in motion by the death of King Uzziah. “In the year of King Uzziah’s death, I saw God . . .”

Perhaps Isaiah was simply making a calendar reference, but it feels like more—like Uzziah was important to the prophet and the death of the king threw his world into chaos. It’s a grief story.

Based on the vision, Isaiah was pretty shaken up—so much that in the face of the burning, six-winged whatevers that we shouting, he cried out as well: “I am a person with unclean lips and I live in the middle of people with unclean lips, yet I am still in the presence of God.”

As much as he was in awe of all he didn’t understand, he also found profound comfort in the middle of his grief. His king had died and now he stood in the presence of awesomeness he had never imagined—and he didn’t really know what to do with it, yet he felt surrounded by God.

Then one of the flaming angels took a live coal and touched Isaiah’s lips—the being touched the part Isaiah said was unclean—and told the prophet that he was forgiven. God followed up with a question that sounds as though it was being asked to a group, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone there but Isaiah and the seraphs.

“Whom should I send, and who will go for us?”
And I picture that Isaiah kind of looked around to see who else was there and then said, “I’m here; send me.”

God’s presence and comfort offered Isaiah a way through his grief.

As Ginger, Todd, and I bounced ideas back and forth at the dinner table, we talked about the way Isaiah saw himself as part of those to whom he spoke: “I am a person with unclean lips in the middle of a people with unclean lips.” When he said he was willing to be sent, he was speaking as a wounded healer, one who knew how hard life was.

We then noticed Isaiah preached that same sermon his whole ministry. He talked over and over about the ways in which God forgive, heals, and calls us through our grief. Skip down thirty-four chapters and Isaiah says,

Why do you declare, “My way is hidden, my God ignores my predicament”?
Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard? God is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. God doesn’t grow tired or weary. God’s understanding is beyond human reach, giving power to the tired and reviving the exhausted.

Young people will become tired and weary, they will certainly stumble; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength; they will fly up on wings like eagles; they will run and not be tired; they will walk and not be weary.

God meets us in our grief with love and forgiveness was the sermon Isaiah preached his whole life—with his whole life. At the table, we wondered aloud what we were preaching with our words and actions.

Ginger said that when she was chaplain of the Student Government Association at her high school she led a spiritual practice time that focused on the words, “Love those who seem unlovable.” After watching her care for those around her, I can say she is still preaching that sermon.

Some time ago my most enduring friend Burt, whom I have known since college gave me a handwritten manuscript of a sermon I preached while we were roommates in seminary, many years before. The whole thing focused on how what mattered most was our connection to one another. God made us to love one another. That’s still the thing that matters most to me.

My life-long theme grows out of grief as well, but it is a grief it took me years to understand. As most of you know, my parents were missionaries when I was growing up and I lived in Africa until I was sixteen. It was an amazing way to grow up and I have many great memories.

But it was also a disconnected way to live. From kindergarten to twelfth grade, I went to ten different schools in five different cities and five different countries.

Burt met in the fall of 1976. In the fall of 1986, I called him to say he was the first friend whom I had known for ten years and known where they were for all ten years. That’s why I call him my most enduring friend.

Perhaps the theme of our lives—the sermon we preach with the way we live—is not so much something we choose as something that grows out of our experiences, out of our griefs and the way we look for God (or that God finds us) in the middle of it.

Which brings me to a question I want you to ponder: What is the sermon you are preaching with your life? Sermon may be too foreboding a word, so let me ask other ways: What is the theme of your life? The connecting thread? What is the story love tells through you? How has your grief opened your heart to see new mercies?

We are all saying something with our lives. May the words of our mouths, the meditations of our hearts, and the sermons of our lives be ones that point others to the enduring love of God. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

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