vulnerability and risk

^{Gospel of Luke 7:11-17.  Reading for Sunday, June 9 2013.}

¹¹Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him.  ¹²As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother's only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town.  ¹³When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, "Do not weep."  ¹⁴Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, "Young man, I say to you, rise!"  ¹⁵The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.  ¹⁶Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has risen among us!" and "God has looked favorably on his people!"  ¹⁷This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.

Think for a minute about the most vulnerable person you know right now. Think of someone at risk.  It could be someone in your family or neighborhood.  It could be someone elderly or very young.  An infant or child, living in unsafe or precarious conditions.  It could be a senior adult living alone.  It could be someone suffering from an illness or an addiction.  In the summer time a lot of kids become more vulnerable.  When school is out and parents are working, what happens?  Some children, whose families count on free school breakfasts and lunches face the problem of food insecurity and hunger.  Children, hungry, in this town.  You know it’s true. Think of someone vulnerable.  How well do you know them or their story?  Enough to want to do something to bring them hope, reduce their fears, increase their chances?  Have you been moved to tears or anger or a feeling of paralysis or despair  by their circumstances?   As adults we are aware of vulnerability.  The threats of life are more real as one ages.  I will be 39 this week. I’m older than I was and younger than I will be.  Not the oldest or the youngest person in the room. In the middle.  But I have experienced physical vulnerability and my own mortality.  And I have been moved many times by the suffering and struggles of others in this congregation, in this community, in the world. 

As a Christian person, as a church, we are called to recognize vulnerable people and serve them.  And we do.  Through Peter’s Porch and global ministry partners, we reach out. I am thankful for your service.  Bishop Hoover gave a shout out to my congregation (Zion, Akron, PA) in his last sermon as Bishop presiding at the annual synod assembly this weekend.  His sermon was about risk-taking as gospel servants and he named this congregation as one of the examples of this synod of a congregation taking risks to meet physical needs of people in our community.  Do you see our ministry as a risk-taking mission?

One day Jesus sees the most vulnerable person in his circle of encounter; a woman, weeping, behind the funeral procession of her only son.  She has already buried her husband and now she must bury a son.  Because there was no government safety net, no social security or Medicaid, this woman’s future is also at risk.  She could very well face her own death.  She faces her own decline and suffering, while she grieves her losses.  You know this happens every day in this world.  Every day.  We hear stories. Sometimes we are close enough to encounter, as Jesus does.  When he does, he is moved to compassion.  In the original language, Jesus has a physical reaction, his guts tighten, at the sight of this funeral.  He says to her “Do not weep.” He enters her circumstances and raises her dead son.  Fear and amazement go viral.  What were they saying?  “The child lives.”  “He’s alive.”  “Jesus raised a dead boy and restored the hope of this poor woman.” 

A colleague says that we are called as a church to get close enough to our neighbors to hear their weeping.  It is only when we risk this kind of proximity that we truly follow Jesus in mission. And we know that privacy and  personal discomfort prevent us from doing this.  We turn aside, remain silent, passive, and ignorant of people’s stories.  We fail to connect.  We experience our own vulnerabilities, our own anxieties that drive our behavior.  We professionalize ministry, expecting that the Pastor is the one who does this kind of work.  We feel weak, over stretched.   I suspect that we relate with the widow more than with Jesus.  As a congregation on Main Street, we have become more vulnerable.  The next generation has been lost to us.  They are not here.  We lament our future.  How long can we sustain this congregation full of widows and senior adults? 

As a church, as a congregation of Lutherans on Main Street, we hear GOOD NEWS.  Jesus raises up the next generation.  There were over twenty high school youth at assembly.  I saw several new, young pastors at assembly. I am not the youngest leader in our synod, in our church.  This is a hopeful sign.  Jesus enters our story and promises new life will emerge.  He comes near to us in the bread and cup, in the story and song, in the broken hearts and hopeful joy we share.  BUT, we are called to a new boldness.  We are called to risk entering into the stories of those who are vulnerable around us because we are human, we are vulnerable too.  Jesus knows our vulnerability, because he too was subject to the same weakness.  He suffered and died to know our suffering and death. And he was raised so that we might know HIS life-giving Spirit dwelling in our hearts through faith.   So let us take risks for the gospel.  Let us sing a new song.  Let us risk being joyful in the midst of suffering.  Let us risk hearing the stories and offering hope, restoration, and life where there is grief and hardship and pain.  We are being raised to life, so that God's power and love might be proclaimed and praised by the people.  

who has faith?

(Based on two bible readings for Sunday June 2nd, 2013.  Galatians 1:1-12; Luke 7:1-10)

What is faith?  What does it mean to be a faithful person?  In general, we may define it as one who is a devout adherent to a religious system of belief. A faithful Muslim prays five times a day; a faithful Jew learns the Torah and observes the Sabbath; a faithful Hindu prays to the gods and goes to temple.  A faithful person is someone who practices a religion. One can be a faithful spouse, too.  Synonymous with faith, a person of integrity, trustworthy, loyal, committed.  The U.S. Marine corp. are always faithful, “semper fidelis.” --To the corps., its principles, duties, and national defense calling.  To be faithful is to adhere to an ideology or to love what one has been taught.  One can be a faithful democrat, a faithful bigot, a faithful shopper, a faithful friend, a faithful anything really.  To devote one’s self to something or someone is to be faithful.   To whom or what are you most faithful? Who is faithful to you?

More specifically now, what does it mean to be a faithful Christian?  There may be some confusion about this question.  Why?  Because Christians have made it difficult to know what it means to be a faithful one, because there are so many kinds of Christians who exercise faithfulness in so many different ways.  Christians have defined themselves in a variety of ways, and by defining who they are have defined who they are not. We call that dogma or doctrine, human interpretation of belief. Some have defined Christianity too narrowly, choosing an issue or a moral opinion as the defining matter. As a result we have drawn distinctions and separated ourselves from other Christians and even more so from non-Christians.   The diversity of religious expression and our compulsion to be right has meant that Christians do not live in unity with one another. This is a hurtful scandal. Christian faith excludes, establishes certain boundaries, and develops systems to uphold those exclusive boundaries.  Congregations are the end product of private individuals practicing faith with like-minded individuals.  Often, churches have a circle-the-wagons mentality that divides the world into faithful insiders and unfaithful outsiders. We have chosen to be part of the church, chosen how to be faithful here together.  What does faithfulness look like here?  To be moral, follow biblical rules, go to church regularly, pray, give, be baptized, take communion, show up on Sunday, and contribute in some way?  Sometimes we confuse being faithful to a congregation or a pastor or a liturgy or a biblical tenet with having faith in Jesus. And when we do, we suggest that our ways are the only ways, our ways define faith. We get stuck in traditions, in rituals, in behaviors, with people that may not help us mature in faith in God, in Jesus.  So what is Christian faith?

if the earth...a poem by Joe Miller

If the earth

were only a few feet in 

diameter, floating a few feet above a

field somewhere, people would come from

every where to marvel at it. People would walk

around it marveling at its big pools of water, its little

pools and the water flowing between the pools. People

would marvel at the bumps on it, and the holes in it, and they

would marvel at the very thin layer of gas surrounding it and the

water suspended in the gas. The people would marvel at all the

creatures walking around the surface of the ball, and in the water.

The people would declare it precious because it was the only one,

And they would protect it, so that it would not be hurt. The ball

would be the greatest wonder known, and people would come

to behold it, to be healed, to gain knowledge, and to know

beauty and to wonder how it could be. People would love

it, and defend it with their lives, because they would

somehow know that their lives, their own

roundness, could be nothing without it.

If the earth were only a few

feet in diameter.---Joe Miller.

vulnerability and protection: The biblical image of the Good Shepherd

 The biblical image of the shepherd, though not a common contemporary reference point for us, still speaks to the faithful in meaningful ways.  The 23^rd psalm and the images of Jesus the shepherd are most often associated with death, with funerals.   The image and the Psalm bring comfort to those who mourn.  Shepherd images for God were long part of the story of Israel.  Some 500 years before Jesus, Ezekiel the prophet spoke of God as a shepherd when he said:

 “For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. ¹²As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. ¹³I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land. ¹⁴I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. ¹⁵I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. ¹⁶I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.” Ezekiel 34.

b i b l e

This is not a column about the history channel's miniseries, "The Bible" which aired in March. I commented about that in an earlier blog entry.  I shared my opinion on it. I have shared it since with people in and outside of church, who have asked me what I thought. I have a relationship with the bible. I read it. I am a Lutheran pastor, a person of faith. I hear God speak in the bible.  I hear my own story, the human story in the bible too.  I also hear both the Jewish story and the Christian story tied together by a first Century prophet named Jesus of Nazareth.  The bible says he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, died, and was buried.  On the third day he rose from the dead and appeared to his followers in and beyond Jerusalem for a period of some 40 days.  I have read the bible in many different ways; for personal faith and theological understanding; for moral guidance; for historical/literary education; for linguistic/cultural meaning; for pastoral care and counsel, for preaching and teaching; for prayer and conversation with God.  The bible is many things to me.  It is not God.  It is not perfect,but it is holy.  God's Word is heard through it.  I don't believe in biblical inerrancy.  People wrote it and translated it and rewrote it and copied it and rewrote it.  But God inspired it. It tells the world the truth about ourselves and the God who made all things by love for love.It is self-contradictory, violent, and oppressive.  It is mythological and supernatural.  It is ordinary and human.  There are universally applicable truths and there are highly contextual, culturally premodern, middle Eastern stories, norms, and values that must be understood as such.  To confuse the latter with the former has caused suffering.  It bears interpretation, to say the least.

easter

Why do you look for the living among the dead?   Why do we get stuck in bad habits and unhealthy patterns of behavior?  Why do we let nostalgia and fears hold us back from experiencing the present in its fullest?  Why do bad memories haunts us? Why do mistakes, regrets, secret sins, failures, and losses prevent us from enjoying the life God has given us?  We are haunted by pasts we cannot change and an unknown future that ends in death.  The older we get the more life is behind us.  More memories, fewer hopes.  Harder to make amends as time goes by.  Why do we look for the living among the dead?  Because we have learned what to expect.  We have learned that life is a journey from birth to death. We have learned that we cannot survive death.  It is inevitable. So we live as best we can. And along the way there is both joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure. We seek the pleasure and the joy where we can find it.  We lament “Why me?” when pain or grief overwhelm us. We swing between the pendulum, from the joy of living to the fear of dying.  We avoid the latter as much as we are able by sheltering ourselves in our small, comfortable worlds. We keep the threats at a distance, taking few risks, preferring to watch death on television as entertainment or distant news. Why do you look for the living among the dead?  Because we know that life is lived in one direction, a direction that leads to the grave. But Easter tells another story. It is the story of what happens when the sun came up. But Easter began in the hours before that…in the darkness before the dawn.