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advent journal: themeless

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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advent journal: themeless

The woman in my poem from a couple of nights ago made it into my sermon today. She has still been on my mind.

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Sometimes when I look at the lectionary passages I wonder about the committee that put it together. I learned this week that the Common Lectionary for Protestant churches only came about in 1983 and was revised in 1992. I didn’t realize it was so new. Part of the idea behind it is that the scriptures for each week are somewhat thematic, which is difficult, whether we are talking about the Bible or about life because neither fits easily into thematic systems.

We are in the third year of the three-year cycle and, at least for Advent, the chosen passages are heavy on foreboding and warning about what is coming, when it comes to the applied theme, as though the point is what’s coming and not where we are right now. But, regardless of what’s coming, we don’t get to be anywhere but where we are right now—here in the middle of everything, without a clarifying theme.

As most of you know, I went to the hospital on Thursday for my ablation.

They called me on Wednesday and told me to be there at 8:30 am, so Ginger and I did as they asked. It did not take long to get checked in and then they took me to the pre-op ward where they said it would be about forty-five minutes to an hour. They came back three more times and said the same thing until I finally went into surgery around 1 pm.

I was frustrated and tired, but I also knew I needed to get my heart back in rhythm, so I waited.

Some time after we arrived, a woman was put in a room (well, a small space with a separating curtain) across from us. I didn’t even know she was there until she became vocal about her frustration and said, loudly, “I want to leave.” Everyone in the ward was there because of some heart issue that needed correcting. But whatever concern she had that had brought her in was overwhelmed by her fear and anger. She was determined to leave.

A doctor came to talk to her but did more talking than listening, maybe because she was startled by the woman’s resolve, or frustrated because she couldn’t fix the situation. I don’t know. But it became a power struggle. When the woman persisted, we could hear the doctor say, “You’re being rude,” which didn’t help things.

Then a nurse came and listened first and then told the woman what she needed to do to leave the ward, which she did. Both Ginger and I were saddened by what happened because the woman looked so despairing as she left. The whole scene was sad.

She has stayed on my mind as I worked on this sermon and thought about our lighting the Peace Candle this week because she was not at peace with herself or with her circumstances. I’ve been trying to figure out how to preach a sermon that would mean something to her—and, hopefully to us as well.

As I said earlier, life, in the moments we are living it, doesn’t necessarily fit nicely into a theme, whatever the theme is. We tell stories that make sense of it when we can look back and see connections that weren’t so apparent in the moment. We look back at the stories surrounding Jesus’ birth and retell them to focus our hearts, but it I imagine Mary or Joseph or some of the others must have thought, “I want to leave” as heavenly messengers appeared and their worlds crashed in around them.

They didn’t have an Advent wreath to tell them what week it was and which candle to light next.

Neither did Paul or the people in Philippi, which was a young fledgling congregation. All of the churches who received the letters in our Bible were first generation congregations. They didn’t know what church was. They didn’t have bylaws to guide them or minutes to read. They were people responding to God’s love and trying to figure out life together.

As confident as Paul sounded when he wrote, he was in and out of prison because of his actions and was also learning as he went. In almost every letter he sent, he began with a statement of gratitude similar to the one we read this morning: “I thank my God when I remember you, for you fill my life with joy.” And then he said, “This is my prayer: that your love might become even more and more rich with knowledge and all kinds of insight.”

His prayer reminds us that love is an act of will—something we do on purpose. And it is something we can practice. We can get better at it. We can grow in insight and tenacity.

One of the Advent figures every year is John the Baptist, whom the gospel writers say reminded people of the old school prophets who called people to straighten out crooked roads and make the rough places easy to travel through. After being on some rough roads myself lately, I hear those words as a call to love with insight and determination.

We do not have to go far to find folks who are hurting and who are not sure what is going to happen next. We just have to look around the room. And we need to risk asking questions of one another to find out what is going on, even as we need to risk asking for help even when we know no one can make all the pain go away. Perhaps the starting place is to first make sure we are vocal about our gratitude for one another and for the chance to be here together.

In this season, we are telling the story of God’s willingness to incarnate love so we would know we are not alone. As the angel said to Joseph, “Call him Emmanuel, which means God with us.” God is with us and we are with each other. Right here in the middle of it all. That gives me hope.

We light the candles and we sing the songs and we tell the stories not because they organize Advent into a cohesive system that answers all our questions and lets us know what’s coming. We do all of these things to remember God has chosen to be here in the middle with us, no matter what we are feeling or facing, no matter how badly we wish we could leave. God stays and invites us to do the same. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: breakfast potatoes

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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0
advent journal: breakfast potatoes

breakfast potatoes

in our favorite
breakfast joint
on the way home
from the hospital
for the first time
in a long time

I heard the sound
of one chef chopping
the rhythm of the knife
beating in my new ear
a sound my brain
knows by heart

when I caught his eye
I asked, “making soup?”
“chopping potatoes,”
came the answer
“we always need
breakfast potatoes”

it was almost noon
his preparation was
an act of fleeting hope
he will have to do
again tomorrow
after breakfast

hope can’t be
stored any more
than hash browns
the beat of blade
on cutting board is
what keeps us alive

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: fear factor

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1
advent journal: fear factor

fear factor

it was not long after
the third doctor came by
to tell me it would be

another hour until
I was taken back
to the operating room

that the woman
in the next cubicle
began to assert herself

“I want to leave”
a sentiment shared
on almost every stretcher

but she was serious
and her proclamation
upset the rhythm

of the cardiac ward
the anesthesiologist’s
attempt to subdue her

became a power struggle
as she chose control
over compassion

and stormed away
missing the fear in
the eyes glaring at her

the nurse who followed
said she would help
the woman get ready

and then led her out
past the rest of us
perhaps more fearful

of leaving than waiting
my time finally came
but not before the

doctor offered a litany
of possible complications
all rare he assured

and when I woke
in the recovery room
a few hours later

groggy and aching
I wondered how she
was recovering

and whether either
of us would get
much sleep

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: ablation

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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4
advent journal: ablation

ablation

the word rings in my ears
like a rite or a ritual
though I am not sure
exactly what role I play

it means “a carrying away”
in its oldest form though
medically it’s “a removal
of something harmful”

they will carry away
broken bits of my heart
to restore its rhythm
that sounds sacred

and I listen for sacred
holy means healthy
I’m an arhythmic pilgrim
hoping for healing

my doctor practices
this ritual most everyday
he repeats his rhthyms
of remove and restore

my role is to offer my
heart and trust him to
know what to remove
and what to let remain

none of this feels normal
I’m in over my heart
my badly beating heart
come all is now ready

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: cartography

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1
advent journal: cartography

Since I had my cochlear implant surgery eight weeks ago, I have been writing a poem a day to help me reflect on what is happening to me and my hearing. This is today’s poem.

cartography

we forget
the word map
is short for
mappa mundi
map of the world

or perhaps
map of a world
since no cartographer
can cover it all

my audiologist
uses the word map
to describe
how she programs
my cochlear implant

the longitude
of volume
the latitude
of frequencies

she tested how
I am navigating
my new world
with sounds
and sentences

expanding the map
expanded my horizon
by a factor of ten
is what I heard

leaving me to dream
of places to hear
and songs to sing
of words on the tip
of the universe’s tongue

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: mooing at kyle

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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5
advent journal: mooing at kyle

Everything that is going on in the Brasher-Cunningham household alongside of Advent beginning before we were finished with Thanksgiving leftovers mean I am a day late beginning my annual Advent Journal, which starts this year with my sermon from yesterday, “Mooing at Kyle.” I hope your Advent is full of hope and wonder.

_____________________

We have had a two-year-old at our house these past few days—and me made me think about angels.

This Thanksgiving, Ginger and I were fortunate to have a table filled with people we think of as chosen family—nine in all. Among them was our former foster daughter and her wife and their son, Rafa, who is two. He is bright and curious and in love with the world. He brought so much joy to our time together.

When it came time for pie—and the rain had stopped—we all went out to our barn to have pie together. When we got to the barn, Rafa said, “Where are the cows?” Kyle, one of our other friends (who is also a great father) responded with a really good cow impersonation that both startled and scared Rafa.

Over the next few minutes we watched and listened as his mothers helped him get beyond his fear. Neither of them said, “Don’t be scared,” or “It’s no big deal.” They asked him questions about what he had heard, they identified Kyle as the one who had made the sound so Rafa would know where it came from, and they helped him form a response: “Go moo at Kyle.”

It wasn’t too long before Rafa had walked around the table to where Kyle was and boisterously shouted, “Moo!” And we all laughed.

Here’s where the angels come in.

One of the hallmarks of the story of all that leads up to Jesus’ birth is the messenger who brings the news, and pretty much every time they show up they offer the same greeting: “Fear not!” or “Do not be afraid,” depending on the translation.

I’m not sure that is the most helpful thing to say, when it comes to fear.

Maybe it crosses some sort of line to critique a divine messenger, but bear with me. Fear is not a choice; it’s a reaction. A response. If something frightens us, we get scared. That’s not a flaw, or a mistake. Life is populated with frightening things and scary situations. Being afraid is not a flaw.

The task is to do what it takes to get through or beyond our fear, to not be paralyzed by it. We have to learn how to moo at Kyle, if you will. And that is often a big task, depending on the moment. When we look at the story unfolding in front of us during Advent, we can see how Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth, Zacharias, and others did more than simply not be afraid when they heard a voice they didn’t recognize. They figured out how to moo at Kyle, to get to what comes after fear.

Hope is what comes after fear. Love is what comes after fear. Laughter, often, is what comes after fear. So are rest and peace and growth. Fear is not the last word, in part, because fear is a response not a choice. Love and hope are choices.

We can hear overtones of that in the passage we read this morning. Paul wrote to the young congregation in Thessalonica, which was a diverse group of people trying to figure out how to live together, and said he prayed they would have overflowing love for one another—that they would choose to grow together, to grow with and toward each other.

Perhaps that’s what the angel was trying to get at as well, if we look closer, or translate it differently. Maybe “Fear not!” was intended less as a divine imperative and more in the spirit of Rafa’s moms helping him figure out how to make fear a temporary place rather than a full stop.

At the heart of Jesus’ story is that God poured God’s self into human skin and became vulnerable. To be human is to be vulnerable; neither of those are choices either. Jesus did what the angels could not. He walked the earth as a living, breathing, fearing, loving person. He was vulnerable, too. He understood grief and pain and loss and joy with those understandings called us to live like the lilies and birds we talked about last week, to choose to live through and beyond our fear and to grasp, as poet David Whyte says, “the essential, tidal, and conversational foundations of our identity.”

Life is not about being fearless, it’s about being together, about sharing our griefs and losses, about honoring the details of one another’s lives, about investing in a legacy of love that makes us all better at mooing at Kyle.

So, be afraid. Life is often scary. And then listen for the voices of love that call us to what lies beyond fear, what will get us through our fear, what reminds us love is stronger than fear. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

consider

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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5
consider

It’s been a while since I posted a sermon, mostly because all of the medical stuff I have been dealing with has made what I have offered from the pulpit less than postable. But I’m back and talking about the birds and flowers that Jesus pointed to as examples of how to be human.

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Ginger and I went to breakfast after one of my recent doctor visits and from the window of the coffee shop we could see these small black birds sitting on the cable that ran above the street. I don’t know what kind of birds they were. Sparrows, maybe starlings. Every so often, based on some signal we could not discern, they flew off the wire in formation and then swirled and darted and banked all together until they returned to their perches. They would sit quietly for a few minutes and then they did it again.

It was amazing to watch the skill and whimsy of the little creatures as they zigged and zagged across the sky, accomplishing nothing specific other than being themselves, which is what every last one of us, from starlings to stars was put here to do: to be ourselves and to be together. It’s right in Jesus’ words that we read a few minutes ago:

Don’t worry about your life, what you’ll eat or what you’ll drink, or about your body, what you’ll wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds in the sky. They don’t sow seed or harvest grain or gather crops into barns. Yet God feeds them. Aren’t you worth much more than they are? Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life?

I learned this week that the root of both the words worry and anxious has to do with choking or strangulation. When anxiety takes hold it constricts us. Gratitude, on the other hand, puts air in our lungs; it is expansive. Listen to the words of poet David Whyte:

Gratitude is the understanding that many millions of things must come together and live together and mesh together and breathe together in order for us to take even one more breath of air, that the underlying gift of life and incarnation as a living, participating human being is a privilege; that we are miraculously, part of something, rather than nothing. Even if that something is temporarily pain or despair, we inhabit a living world, with real faces, real voices, laughter, the color blue, the green of the fields, the freshness of a cold wind, or the tawny hue of a winter landscape.

He closes by saying, “Thankfulness finds its full measure in generosity of presence, both through participation and witness. . . . Being unappreciative might mean we are simply not paying attention.”

Gratitude finds its full measure through participation and witness. I love that. And I needed that word this week. As many of you have experienced, one of the hardest part about being sick is it makes us self-focused. That is not a bad thing in and of itself—sometimes we need to pay attention to ourselves—but when we turn inward we can lose sight of all that connects and supports us. We can’t see beyond ourselves. Our view of the world and who we are in it becomes constricted.

One of the definitions of depression I learned early on was that it was “anger turned inward.” I would add that I think it’s just about everything turned inward. When I am depressed, I can’t see beyond myself.

Illness is not the only hardship that can alter our perspective. Sometimes it’s just life. Do you ever catch yourself thinking, “I just have so much to do?” And you’re telling the truth. Life is hard and demanding and exhausting and even constricting. And so, Jesus said, consider the starlings and the lilies.

The root of the word consider means “observe the stars.” Look up at the heavens. Instead of focusing on all that feels like it’s going to strangle us, consider the universe, from flowers to galaxies far, far away.

To live in a spirit of gratitude—to pay attention—is to actively point our minds and hearts at something: to look up, look out, look for, look beyond individual selves and see the ways in which everyone and everything is essentially connected.

We sit here this morning in a building constructed by our forebearers, a tangible reminder of what has been handed down. Look out the window and we see cars that belong to Quinnipiac students and the staff from the restaurant across the street, as well as the beginnings of the Boy Scout troop’s Christmas tree lot. We will share coffee and snacks together in a building that will house people this week for twelve step groups, Jazzercize, contra dancing, and several meals. The fruit and vegetables that adorn our Communion table this morning will go, along with the bags in the parish house, to feed people across Hamden this week.

Hear the words of David Whyte again: “Thankfulness finds its full measure in generosity of presence, both through participation and witness.”

I think thankfulness also finds its full measure in the temporary. By that I mean, the fact that we aren’t here forever can be an expansive truth rather than a constrictive one, if we so choose.

Do you know how long a starling lives?

I had to look it up. Two to three years. A sparrow can live up to five. Lilies bloom only a few weeks out of the year. We don’t last that much longer. Writer Amy Leach says, “Our transience is our tragedy but also our beauty, because when you don’t have forever, intensity is imperative.”

The writer of Ecclesiastes said, “I know there is nothing better for us than to be joyful and to do good throughout our lives; to eat and drink and see the good in all of our hard work is a gift from God.”

And it’s in the last verse of the hymn that will close our service this morning (which you’ve heard me quote several times because it’s one of my favorites):

For the harvests of the Spirit, thanks be to God.
For the good we all inherit, thanks be to God.
For the wonders that astound us, for the truth that still confounds us,
Most of all that love has found us, thanks be to God.

May be we stargazers and starling watchers; may we pay attention to all that swirls around us; may we breathe deep the breath of God and choose to be intensely grateful for these days that we share together. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

PS—my sermon reminded me of this wonderful Bill Mallonee song.

saved together

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1
saved together

My sermon is only a few days old, but it feels like a lifetime ago, thanks to my implant surgery. I finally felt up to doing some work today, so here you go.

_______________________

One of the many joys of being in New Orleans last week was I had the chance to see our nephew’s children. (Well—we got to see the parents as well.) Ben and Jenny, his wife, have three kids: Gabriel, or Gabe; Galena, or Lena; and Anastasia, or Ana. They are six, four, and one.

We met at a Cuban restaurant that had a big outside play area so the kids could run around when they got tired of the adults talking. Ana was quite the explorer, but a pattern quickly developed: when she came back to the table, she came to me, arms raised, ready to be picked up, and she would sit in my lap until it was time to get down again. As the afternoon passed and she got tired, she put her head on my shoulder. I sang softly to her and she began to pat me on the back.

She had never seen me before, but somehow knew I was someone who loved her.

As I turned to the scripture this week and read Mark’s description of the children coming to Jesus, I couldn’t help but see Ana running to me, so trusting and joyful. She didn’t have to know me, she trusted the love that she knew connected us.

I don’t mean she went through some logical, philosophical thought process. I mean she trusted the love that has not yet been taught not to trust. She knew that she and I were connected. She knew if she put her hands in the air, I would pick her up. And I was offered the gift of affirming what she knew by pulling her up in my lap.

I got to reinforce the love that connects us.

When I first read our passage for today, it felt like a bit of an odd choice for World Communion Sunday, but as I thought about Ana and I reflected on the scene Mark described where the disciples scolded Jesus for playing with the children instead of doing whatever adult thing was more important, I changed my mind. This is a beautiful text for today.

If you grew up in church, you may have heard some version of this story: God created the universe and then created human beings. What is often underlined is humanity is sinful from the start. They couldn’t stay away from the fruit they weren’t supposed to touch and sinned by eating it, damning all of humanity who came after them, which is why Jesus had to come and die to pay for our sins.

That story has had a great deal of influence, but it’s not true—at least, not according to Jesus and Ana.

The first words God said about every aspect of creation—including humanity—were, “That’s good!” We were born in original love, not original sin. It is life, not God, who too often teaches us otherwise.

Love is intrinsic. Love is where we start and where we are going, if we follow God’s story. We learn division and separation. We learn prejudice. We learn selfishness. We learn fear. We learn shame. And so, Jesus said, we have to re-learn how to welcome love like a child, arms up trusting that love will embrace us.

We can’t do that work alone. We need each other to find wholeness, to remember that we are made for love.

In one of her books, Madeleine L’Engle tells the story of her young granddaughter who, when her new baby brother was brought into the house, was determined to get close to him, so much so that one afternoon she climbed up into the crib as the little one was sleeping. The little girl was about four. Her mother saw her go into the room and stood at the door for a moment before she intervened. The girl stroked her brother’s head and said, “Tell me about God. I’m forgetting.”

Each time we come to this Table together we repeat Jesus’ words to his loved ones: “Whenever you share this meal, remember me.

Theologian Ilia Delio says,

We are saved, made whole, not as individuals but as a collective community, a body imbued with a living Spirit of life, the pulsating energies of love. . . . The universe is unfinished, we are unfinished, the earth is unfinished, and, much to our amazement, God is unfinished, as well. . . . We are saved by our reconciliation with God within and without, by making a conscious option for the whole. As we are brought into wholeness, God, too, is made whole.

A couple of Thursdays ago, the most important thing I did was attend to my grandniece. It may seem like the world was not changed by what we did together, but Jesus would say otherwise.

We call today World Communion Sunday because several denominations agreed to mark the day together. The name is a bit audacious because only a small fraction of the world’s population will take part. Our sharing the meal together, may also seem like the world will not be changed, but—again—Jesus would say otherwise.

As we prepare to feed one another from God’s Table, we are going to sing the song I wrote this summer, “The Belong Song.”

you belong and I do too
we belong yes me and you
everybody sing the song
everyone belongs

take a look around this place
we’re short on shade and we’re long on grace
risking hope with open hearts
that’s how revolutions start

you belong and I do too
we belong yes me and you
everybody sing the song
everyone belongs

we are not alone
we are not alone
we are not alone

our hurt has helped shape who we are
but we are more than battle scars
our broken-hearted harmony
unleashes love and sets us free

you belong and I do too
we belong yes me and you
everybody sing the song
everyone belongs

Though I didn’t write it as a Communion hymn, it works pretty well. Some of you asked to sing it; thanks for the suggestion. We are here today to remember ourselves in Jesus’ name, to help each other not forget that we are all wonderfully and uniquely created in the image of God and worthy to be loved, to continue becoming the people we were created to be when we were born in original love. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

roundabout theology

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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0
roundabout theology

When I got my Honda a couple of years ago, it was my first time to have a screen and easy access to a GPS. When I tell it I want to come here, it says the quickest way to get from Guilford to here is to take I-95 to I-91. It is (usually) quick, and mostly uneventful, but it is also rather bland. But when I take that route, I feel like all I really see is the highway.

As I result, I have made it a habit to plan my time so I can leave a bit earlier and wander on the small roads through North Branford, which winds through farms and houses. It takes about ten minutes longer, but I see more than the road when I go that way.

I also go around the traffic circle in Branford, or the rotary, as many of us say, though my first inclination is to call it a roundabout because that is what they were called in East Africa, thanks to the British influence. When I lived in Nairobi, the city had a million people and only one traffic signal. All the other intersections were either stop signs or roundabouts.

As you know, the key to a working traffic circle or roundabout is recognizing who has the right of way—that is, who gets to go first and who has to wait. I was learned about driving in Nairobi, where they drive on what we call “the wrong side” of the road, and the car to the right was the one who go to go first, so I thought “right of way” meant being on the right. I was surprised to learn that even when you are on the left, you have the right of way.

Before cars, the term meant the right to cross or pass through someone else’s property. When cars made traffic a reality, the phrase came to mean who gets to go first. To remind ourselves of that, we put up the signs that are upside down yellow triangles: the YIELD signs.

Yield is an interesting word because it carries more than one meaning. Though we may not think about it when we are sitting in traffic, it’s a word that carries a history steeped in power because it can mean to give in or submit or surrender to a stronger force or person. The problem is the interaction assumes hierarchy and conflict, which doesn’t make for a great metaphor when it comes to relationships.

Yield can also mean a return on investment, or the harvest of a crop—the yield of a farm. It is the reward of our actions, if you will.

We can say, then, that being willing to yield at the roundabout is not so much about giving in to an adversary as it is reaping the harvest of our cooperation and mutuality to get where we are going.

James knew nothing of traffic circles, but he did offer us a “roundabout theology.” Listen to the last part of our scripture again:

You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor.

“The hard work of getting along with each other”—that’s a phrase worth remembering. Getting along is rich and meaningful—it’s the stuff love is made of—and it’s work. Hard work. We have to mean it. It doesn’t happen by accident.

With that in mind, I want to pass along a couple of things that found me this week as I was thinking about this sermon. One is a quote from Shane Parrish, who writes one of the newsletters I read. He said,

Too often, the people we ask for feedback are nice but not kind. Kind people will tell you things a nice person will not. A kind person will tell you that you have spinach on your teeth. A nice person won’t because it’s uncomfortable. A kind person will tell us what holds us back, even when it’s uncomfortable. A nice person avoids giving us critical feedback because they’re worried about hurting our feelings. No wonder we think other people will be interested in our excuses.

His words may feel odd as we talk about yielding, but I think they help underline that we are talking about investing not giving in. If we are committed to helping each other get where we are going, then doing the hard work of being kind rather than just being nice or polite is a big part of the journey.

The other thought came from a person named Peter who is part of a group of guys I meet every Saturday morning for coffee—at 6:30 am. One of the rituals of our gathering is that one of the others, Bill, always asks, “Milt, what’s the word tomorrow?” I am then expected to give a quick summary of my sermon, which is good for me because I have to make sure I know what the point of my sermon is.

After I talked about the roundabouts, Peter said, “That makes me think of what I learned from my hummingbirds. They are beautiful creatures. I have five feeders set up because I love to see them. You can’t believe how selfish they are. If one bird is at the feeder, another will chase them away to get to the same feeder rather than go to one that is open where they both could eat.” Then he said, “I’ve always thought that would make a good sermon.”

“It will!” I said. “Tomorrow.”

As James said, “Real wisdom, God’s wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others.” As we travel together, may we be those who look for ways to yield—to be kind (and nice), to defer, to not have to be first, to look beyond ourselves—to do the hard work of helping each other get where we are going. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

nothing new

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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0
nothing new

Words take on lives of their own, so what we say and how we say it matters.

I know that is not news, but I repeat it because I saw it happen even as I was preparing to preach today. A friend from Texas, who is a former minister, called to check in this week and asked about my sermon. When I told him we were working through James’ letter for the month of September, he said, “I really don’t like James. He’s too judgmental.” Then last night I got an email note from Leon confirming that he would read this morning, and it began, “I love this reading.”

Words take on lives of their own, whether they are written down or spoken.

To get that point across, James used a whole bunch of metaphors to talk about, well, a metaphor. He wrote about the power—and danger—of the tongue, which is a metaphor for what we say and how we say it: for how we choose our words. In these few verses he likened the tongue to a bit in a horse’s mouth, a rudder for a ship, and a spark that sets off a forest fire, with a couple of other references thrown in.

In his descriptions, he also used rather incendiary and hyperbolic language (talking about sending the whole world up in smoke, for example), which often leads us to think his point was for us to not lose our tempers, but his picture was larger than that.

He wanted his readers to understand what they set in motion when the spoke. Whenever they spoke. He had specific people in mind when he set his words free and, as we said at the beginning, words take on lives of their own.

What do these words have to say to us?

We live in a time when it feels like language is changing a great deal. I don’t know whether that is because language is changing faster now than it has in the past or whether it feels that way because we are the ones having to learn new vocabulary and new definitions. I think it is probably the latter because language is always going through changes. Just pick up a Shakespeare play to see that. He wrote in English, but it is not what an English we easily recognize.

When it comes to those changes, it matters to notice that language doesn’t change. What I mean by that is language is not the subject of the verb, but the object. I know that’s kind of an English teacher moment, but it matters to remember that other forces—and we are one of them—change language. What words mean to us changes because what life means to us changes; how we look at life and describe it changes.

Then we have to remember that those changes don’t happen the same way for everyone. What a metaphor means to you may not be the same to me. How we think we are describing something or someone may not be heard that way, which is another way of saying our words are like the bit in a horse’s mouth, or a ship’s rudder, or the match that starts the fire.

I love the way our translation this morning phrases it: “By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it.”

Let me offer another way to make the same point. By our speech we can restore the world, turn chaos into harmony, raise someone’s reputation, and energize the whole world with the spark of our love.”

What we say and how we choose to say it makes a difference.

This is a good place to point out a change I made in today’s lectionary reading. It was supposed to begin with the first verse of chapter three, but we started with the third verse because the first two talked about being teachers. They say,

Don’t be in any rush to become a teacher, my friends. Teaching is highly responsible work. Teachers are held to the strictest standards. And none of us is perfectly qualified. We get it wrong nearly every time we open our mouths. If you could find someone whose speech was perfectly true, you’d have a perfect person, in perfect control of life.

James’ words make me think he had had a few educational experiences where what he had tried to communicate as a teacher had not been taken the way he intended. That makes me think of how I had to learn that when I said something that I thought was profound to a class full of students it was to everyone’s advantage for me to ask, “Did that make sense?” because they didn’t always get understand what I was trying to say.

His words speak to more than just educators, though we could also hear the word teacher as yet another metaphor in these verses, since we all play that role in some sense at different points in our lives. Part of what I hear in what he said is not to rush to be the expert, to be The One Who Knows, but to teach—or speak—as a lifelong learner.

And what we are trying to learn is how to live lives of integrity, of honesty.

We have spent three weeks reading in James. First, he implored us to listen before we spoke, and then to make our actions match our words, which brings us to this morning and the reminder (as one of Ginger’s seminary professors used to say) that actions may speak louder than words but words speak more clearly.

To drive home his point, James closed with a string of rhetorical questions:

A spring doesn’t gush fresh water one day and brackish the next, does it? Apple trees don’t bear strawberries, do they? Raspberry bushes don’t bear apples, do they? You’re not going to dip into a polluted mud hole and get a cup of clear, cool water, are you?

He knew the answers; we know them as well.

Whatever we have to say will be better understood if we are honest and consistent and humble in what we have to say. Our words and our actions should match. Our words, however they come out, reflect who we are and who we appear to be to others. James’ questions call us to remember that those two views should be the same because the words we say take on lives of their own, so what we say and how we say it matters.

As I said when I began, I know I am not saying anything new, but it’s good to be reminded. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

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