Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Sadness and rage and His promise and our hopes in laments . . .


     I had to chuckle at both the week and the readings assigned for this week.  Bibi and I had a bit of a conversation that involved her joining in the criticism of the the lectionary editors.  The reading from Matthew assigned for Father’s Day, in her mind, was not particularly fatherly.  Jesus is sounding harsh with all the divisions He brings.  I had to explain to her that this week’s reading builds on last week’s reading, so it is not as harsh as it sounds.  And she thought it weird that we do not memorialize Father’s Day or Mother’s Day in liturgical churches.  That got her going on the need for the churches to lead society in the teaching about the importance of family.  Y’all are chuckling because you know she was preaching to the choir.
     I was chuckling because I had promised and prepared y’all for a summer and fall of the prophets’ calls to walk humbly and do justice.  Our first OT reading last week, though, was more a history teaching than prophetic teaching.  This week’s is even worse!  It’s a lament!  In fact, it is one of Jeremiah’s great laments.  Which brings me to the week.
     Things around here have been tough the last week.  True, they have been tough for three months, but this week has represented a nadir of sorts.  I think six Adventers were hospitalized this week.  That has brought back into focus the spiritual cost of illnesses during this pandemic.  Most of the hospitals are not allowing us in unless we are immediate family.  People are suffering in isolation in addition to whatever illnesses or injuries are besetting them.  Bobbie has had, what, three surgeries in the last week or ten days?  Michael may have had to have the mesh removed from his last surgery and replaced which was done because the first mesh from his transplant was torn.  If it sounds painful, it’s because it is.  Jane’s was a bit happier.  She’s getting a new knee.  In no time, she and Ronnie will be dancing again, but it still hurts in the interim.  Frances was admitted for stroke-like symptoms.  You get the picture.     
          In the background to that, my extended family was having its own health issues.  Karen’s mother continues to suffer from the effects of her concussion and the lack of a primary care physician.  My mom complained about an issue with her port for dialysis and then radio silent.  It turns out it’s pretty normal.  Apparently, most patients have it done every six months or so.  Mom had gone three years, so she was due.  My grandfather fell and broke his hip.  Yes, he is suffering from Alzheimer’s or dementia and is in his nineties.  My uncle was faced with the prospect of allowing surgery that my grandfather might not understand or be able to rehab or letting him remain bedridden in severe pain for the rest of his life.  Y’all get the picture.
     Pastoral conversations have continued to be deep and painful.  In case you have forgotten, much of the world is still protesting, some of the world is rioting.  There’s an election on the horizon. Some folks are worried that employment is NOT on the horizon.  A new wrinkle has been the newest emotions facing members of our parish and diocese who are People of Color.  The rush of white folks to learn all the issues has been exhausting, frustrating, and even worrisome to them.  Apparently, a memo went out a couple weeks ago that white people should ask their black friend about societal injustices.  Y’all are laughing nervously a bit, but think of the position we put them in now.  Hey, Fred, tell me about the injustices you face on a daily basis.  If Fred is the only PoC that folks know, he’s being asked that a lot.  How much should he share?  How much should he get his hopes up that THIS time it is different?  How does he respond to the comments of the white person asking.  I did not know can be a frustrating response.  Did we not know, or did we not want to know?  Will we be allies going forward, or will we think our jobs are done since we spent a few minutes in uncomfortable listening?  Will we re-evaluate our opinions of Fred positively or negatively?  Every time we ask incredulously how Fred put up with x, y, or z, we are reinforcing we really did not know Fred.
     I have touched on a lot.  There is some squirming here, so I know the Holy Spirit is giving wedgies.  I imagine, for all my summary, I’ve left out your issues, the background noise of your life this week.
     Even my “easy” conversations had challenges this week.  I was approached by the oldest AA group in Brentwood about meeting on our campus once or twice a week.  Usually, they meet at restaurants.  Most of those have cut capacity around here; and let’s face it, do we want to go to those restaurants that have not?  In case you do not speak AA, it is Alcoholics Anonymous.  They are encouraged to refrain from drinking alcohol by one another much like you are encouraged to refrain from sinning at church.  You see where this is going?  How happy are restaurants around here willing to tolerate men refraining from drinking from tying up their limited space for an hour or ninety minutes?
     They had been encouraged to approach me because we are already open to a Twelve Step Group.  They had heard I had some experience with AA and that I claim it is rooted in the Episcopal Church.  That led to a discussion about a number of issues, but most importantly the discussion of the monkey.  How do I reconcile a loving God with His unwillingness to take away the addiction?  Did I understand the pain and hurt that came with that never-ending suffering?
    For my part, I was well-prepared for that conversation, though it was no less painful and dark.  One of my great . . . pastoral challenges was a suicide some years ago.  I’ll spare you the details I shared with these leaders, but I had a gentleman approach me about baptism.  He was convinced Jesus would take away all the pain, all the suffering, all the addiction.  I reminded him that our Lord is a redemptive sufferer, that He uses redemptive suffering to reach others.  I could baptize Him and offer him assurance that His life would be redeemed, that one glorious day in the future, all the hurt and pain and suffering that came from his addiction would not even be worth a tear.  But my experience had been that addiction was a cross that many Christians bore.
     After several weeks, the young man in question decided to pursue baptism.  I thought I had done a good job inoculating him against all the “If God really loves you, He will take the monkey from you” nonsense.  In the end, I was wrong.  A couple years later, he relapsed.  His relapse, in a moment of darkness, led to his taking of his own life.  And I found myself in the middle of a funeral for all those who loved him, who had rooted for him, and who mourned his suicide, with the easy task of preaching God’s love and power.  After that cheerful discussion, the AA guys decided I might be ok, I might have a sense of what they experience on a daily basis, that and my conversations with Bubbles, and my struggles with my own sins.  
     In one of my other group discussions this week, I found myself engaged with nearly every Christian platitude full of heresy.  For the gentleman in question, it began with “God needed another angel” with his explanation of an untimely death.  Y’all know me now.  Not much pisses me off more than when Christians make God sound like a monster all in the interest of dealing with their own struggles.
     Man, I pounced.  I pounced like he’d been saying it for weeks.  I’m sure he meant well.  Most do.  But what are we saying that when we say that phrase.  For his part, he’d kind of forgotten that part that our eternal existence will be greater than that of the angels.  He’d also kind of forgotten that the Lord, the Creator of heaven and earth, can CREATE an angel, if He needs one.  He does not need to kill us to get another.  He sort of specializes in creating from nothing, so He does not need our bodies or our space or our souls or whatever.
     That heretical platitude caused others to share their own.  I had an entire hour or so of remedial teaching and passionate argument because “well, my pastor of 60 years taught me that, if I have faith enough, God will give me money or health or whatever.”  Works righteousness is like a vampire.  It is too hard to kill.
     This sermon would have been a bit too focused on me and way too dark, a couple at 8am said it was still too dark, but I was reminded of the power of laments by a seeming fun-loving Episcopalian last night.
     One of the blessings of Coronatide has been the opportunity to rewatch movies.  In between all the Marvel movies and MiB movies and Indiana Jones movies, there have been some great movies I have forgotten.  One is a fictional story about a real doctor.  The movie is called Patch Adams, and the doctor is played by none other than Robin Williams.  Good, I see many of you have seen it.  For those of you who have not, Patch Adams was a medical student who believed that, in treating only the disease or the injury, we fail to help human beings be truly human.  He was a big proponent of creating a medical community that listened, that empowered, that laughed, and even, if the time came, did not view death as the enemy.  For his views, a medical dean tried to keep him from graduating despite his good grades.  For all his work, he saw thousands of patients after his graduation, and for all the fame generated by this movie, he failed terribly.  Look at our medical system now.  Doctors must see a patient every six minutes.  They don’t really get to know us.  How can they in six minute bursts?  And we treat symptoms far more than underlying causes.  I see the nods.
     Robin Williams plays the lead character, Patch.  Robin was a famous Episcopalian.  He is often credited with that “Top Ten Reasons to be an Episcopalian List” that was a riff on David Letterman back in the day.  Like the Roman Catholic Church: all the pomp and circumstance but none of the guilt.  You never have to handle snakes.  Where three or four are gathered, there’s always a fifth!  Good, may on you know that list.
     I was watching Robin’s scene last night where he stands on the cliff arguing with God, contemplating suicide.  Naturally, I wondered whether he ad-libbed the scene and gave us insight into his own personal demons.  But that fight with God was real.  He was not acting.  To place it in the movie, his girlfriend was killed by a patient.  He blames himself for her death.  He stands at the cliff pondering the jump.
     God, You tell us You made everything.  Given the evil and suffering and meanness of human beings, don’t you think you should have spent an extra session or two of eternity in a brainstorming session?
     God, later You tell us that You rested on the seventh day.  Why the hell didn’t you spend a bit of time considering our need for compassion?
     It is a great scene.  Robin hurls invectives and laments at God, and the whole time he is standing on the edge of a cliff.  In the end, he tells God He’s not worth the jump.  He turns to head back to his medical bag and sees the butterfly.  A butterfly, complete with all the imagery associated with it, has landed on his medical bag.  As he approaches the bag, the butterfly flies to Patch, and Patch continues his fight to change the system of medicine, his dean, and even the need to wear pants under a graduation robe.
     I can tell by the rumor that many of you have seen the movie.  It makes sense at Advent.  A doctor movie starring a famous Episcopalian.  And I totally forgot about it until last night.  But that movie provides a lighter entry into the dark emotions that provoke laments.  And we have lots of reasons to lament.  A pandemic has swept across the world.  Death has followed in ints wake.  Bankruptcies from medical bills are yet to be determined.  Economic ruin has followed in its wake.  Heck, I think we have served about 5000 individuals through our food pantry since this all began, and we are just across the border from the modern Garden of Eden that is known as Brentwood.  How bad has it been in the so-called “undesirable” neighborhoods?
     In case you missed it, there’s been a number of protests and riots around the country as the result of the actions of an abusive police officer, as if we cannot be or do not know abusive folks outside a uniform.  One of their angers or triggers is how everyone hates them right now, how people are flicking them off or cursing them because of an asshole in Minneapolis, but they know those same jerks will expect them to answer 911, to lay down their life for them in the event of an armed burglar or other emergency.  Thankfully, most of those officers with whom I work are Christians.  I get to point out their share of Christ’s ministry.  He knows what it is like to be rejected.  He knows what it is like to be abandoned and betrayed by those whom He came to save.  So, I invite them to lament and rant and rail AND to remember Whom they truly serve.
     Sure enough, I saw headlines this morning that people in cities are calling on police to do their jobs.  Too many senseless killing.  Too many thefts.  It’s almost as if people don’t understand that, absent the police, bad people will do bad things.
     The good side of the protests, though, has been the address of systemic racism in our midst.  People are talking about education, prison, criminal justice, and others parts of our life that we white folks take for granted but that PoC have no such luxury.
     Speaking of PoC, our friends who are PoC are exhausted and fearful and all kinds of unsatisfied emotions.  We are wearing them out asking them to share their stories.  Do we really want to know?  How will we respond to their stories?  What will we think about them in light of those stories?  And will we forget about this in a week or a month like we have every time in the past?  Do we really care about them?  Do we really love them and want a better life for them?  Or are they just the woke cause of the day?
     Think we have cause for lament?  Do you think that maybe God knew what He was doing when He caused laments to be written, edited, and preserved for our understanding?
     In one of my non-Advent groups this week, I brought up the idea of a lament.  I was surprised at how steeped the “Christian” culture was against lament.  Brian, sufferings are God’s way of letting us prove ourselves worthy of His grace?  Brian, God is disappointed in us if we complain.  This is all part of His plan.  Brian, it is a sin to complain about suffering.  NO!  Absolutely not!  If there is a sin in that conversation, it is the idea that God does not want us coming to Him with our hurts, our fears, our booboos, our injustices, our “it’s not fair!’s”.  I get that folks are taught that in many churches, but look at our lesson from Jeremiah today.
     To place this in context, Jeremiah was a prophet during an interesting geo-political time in the world.  I saw that as an observer 2600-2700 years later.  Assyria was on the fall.  Babylon was ascending.  Egypt still thought it mattered.  In some ways, the kings in Jerusalem tried to play sides off against one another rather than obey God.  It was like they thought they knew better than God.  One of Jeremiah’s messages was that the people and leadership needed to return to God.  Their willingness to repent and return would be similar to the willingness of our leaders and most of our neighbors.
     Jeremiah’s pain, though, is not limited to geo-political considerations.  In fact, he will later go about with a yoke as a visible sign that Israel will be enslaved by Babylon and carried off into Exile, but that is another reading and another sermon.  No, aside from the personal sense of failure that everyone is ignoring his warning from God, Jeremiah has just been humiliated, and each of you should give thanks to God that such humiliations are no longer allowed!
     If you turn back to the beginning of the chapter, you learn that Jeremiah has been punished in the stocks by Pashhur, the assistant chief priest of the Temple.  His crime?  Jeremiah has prophesied that for its disobedience, Judah will be carried off into slavery.  They will be utterly defeated, abandoned by Yahweh.  How disobedient is Judah?  The prophet is ignored and mocked by the king and publicly beaten and scourged by the priest!
     We do not live in a shame culture like Jeremiah did, but we certainly understand some of his mindset.  How many of us publicly tell people we are Christians now?  Fifty years ago, you may have gotten some advantage in the Bible Belt, but then everyone claimed to be Christian, too, and received those same advantages.  But now?  Now, many of us whisper it.  We may answer a question, if it is put to us by someone we know and love and trust, but who really wants to be the “Jesus freak” at work, at the club, or in our friends’ circle?  My guess is that some of you gathered here and online today have strong opinions about those headwinds challenging our country, but how many are willing to tell people the source of those solutions?  See, you know Jeremiah’s mindset and emotional state far better than you ever thought!
     Pashhur has just released Jeremiah in an act of kindness.  No doubt he expected Jeremiah to be grateful and to have learned his lesson after the stocks and 39 lashes.  God, of course, cares not at all for such things as human beings.  God instructs Jeremiah to prophesy that He has changed Pashhur’s name.  What meant peaceful or ease or contentment will now mean surrounded by terror, in God’s eyes.  Pashhur, for his insult of the prophet and of God, will be carried off into slavery into Babylon.  There he will die.  
     How would you like to be Jeremiah?  How do you think that message went over?  Predictably, Jerusalem ignores the prophet.  Jeremiah, for his part, is fed up with it.  I do all that You ask, Lord, and what do I have to show for it?  Where’s my glory?  Where’s my respect?  Where’s my peace?  You have seduced me.  You have tricked me.  I try to stay silent but Your words cannot be contained!
     Ever found yourself arguing with God about His faithfulness?  Ever found yourself wondering if He cares?  Ever found yourself on the verge of thinking all of this is some kind of wishful, but sadistic, thinking?  You are not alone!  My guess is that far more of God’s people have felt that way at times than have not.  This idea that things are always hunk dory for us is a flat out lie, likely started by the Deceiver as a way to help us stumble.  Ever raged at God because he failed to save or cure a loved one?  Ever held your fist to that imaginary bearded figure in the sky, shook it, and demanded He show Himself to you and tell you why you are crazy to believe all this?  Ever worried that somehow you were the special one whose hairs are not number and who is not worth spit, let alone a pigeon?  Ever found yourself obedient to God and forced to suffer?
     I am here today, my brothers and sisters, to remind you that such cries and complaints and anger are not new to God’s people.  I am here today, my friends, to remind you that such frustrations and doubts are not sins.  They are part and parcel of what it means to be cross bearers in a world that rejects the Cross.  They are the normal experiences for those who know that the stakes and platitudes of this world are vain and empty, that only the promises of God are true, and lasting, and good.  I am here to remind each of us today, myself included, that we share in that prophetic ministry and suffering precisely because we are His sons and daughters!  We walk our Calvaries because He showed us the way, and we trust that, like Paul says today, because we share in His death we will share in His Resurrection and redemption.
     Our path, my friends, is not for the faint of heart or the weak.  It requires strength and determination and perseverance and abundant grace.  But is the path that God uses most often to reach the world around us.  Who better to minister to those suffering from addiction than those who have been freed from their addiction to sin?  Who better to minister to those enslaved by the “ism’s” of the world, than those whose chains to sin have been shattered on the Cross of Christ Jesus?  Who better to teach a world full of fear and hate and distrust than those who know the true cost of love, who are willing to share it, and who know that even these sufferings can be redeemed?
      A couple folks at early church complained I went a bit dark today.  I spoke of suicide and addiction and doubt and fury and pain and suffering and those things which the world thinks us incapable of understanding or aware.  I get it.  But I also hope you heard the promise and hope that God has lavished on all His people.  One day, all this nonsense will pass.  One glorious day, all this hurt and pain and rage will be like that strawberry or splinter of your youth—not even tear provoking!  How glorious must that calling be for those hurts and pains and angers and frustration to be thought of in such a light?!
     For now, though, we are like Jeremiah freed from the stocks of sin!  It is our responsibility—neigh, it is our privilege—to remind those around us that it precisely for all these consequences of sin that He came down from heaven, became sin, and died to sin, that each one of us, indeed all humanity, might have the chance to bask in His love and affection for all eternity!  That’s a message for pondering not just on Father’s Day, but every day!

In His Peace,
Brian

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