3.26.23 "Suddenly, a Noise!" Westminster Presbyterian Church, Pasadena, CA

Ezekiel 37.1-14; Romans 8.6-11

Whatever else can be said about the Christian Faith, this much is clear, at least to me:

The heart of the Christian Faith is hope … 

And hope means courage … the courage to face whatever - may come our way, however it shakes out for us … 

Life can be downright miserable … things go south in a heartbeat … we screw up badly, behave in the worst of ways … friends desert us, colleagues betray us … our car breaks down.

We all know the downside of life … we’ve been there … maybe we’re there right now, we’ll be there again … it’s just the way it is.

The Bible knows full well the crummy side of life … if it isn’t one thing, it’s another.

And so it shall be, to the end of the age …

But this much can be said … this much has to be said … there is hope, a focused, profound, hope, that transcends all other hopes … there is goodness at work in the universe … there is grace, there is mercy, there is love … from death to life, from bondage to freedom, from a valley of dry, dry, bones, to a new day rising.

Ezekiel knows hard times … he’s been with the people, in the long hike to Babylon … a trail of tears.

Let’s be honest … 

In the down side of life, we can lose our bearings … sadness overwhelms the soul … bitterness, resentment, about how things turn out, because sometimes, things turn out really crummy … 

And it’s not even our doing … the shifting sands of time and culture can throw us to the side of the road and leave us stranded … economic powers, political shifts, far beyond our control … time and tide wait for no man.

I keep thinking about the folks in Syria and Turkey … 50,000 dead and counting … so much lost … so much gone … it’ll take years to rebuild those cities and towns …  

The people in Ukraine - day in, day out, the threat of death … sorrow and fear at every turn of the corner … 

Ezekiel’s people in Babylon, lost … forlorn … broken:

Psalm 137 says it well …

By the rivers of Babylon— there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?

The Psalm ends with some of the bitterest words every uttered by any human being, anywhere … a scream of rage, hurt, revenge - against the Babylonians, for what they’ve done …

Some read Psalm 137, and ask, “Why is this even in the Bible?” 

This hideous outburst, dripping with bitterness … it’s in the Bible, because the Bible is all about the human journey, the human story, our story … hopes and setback, defeat and victory, finding a way through, and finding our way blocked, the good … the bad … and the ugly.

The Bible is thoroughly honest; the Bible doesn’t pull its punches, it’s doesn’t shy away from the wretched things of life  … 

And still, always and forever, the singular, beautiful, message of hope and courage … don’t be afraid, I am with you always, to the end … I will never leave you or forsake you … there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God, neither in this life, or the life to come, neither trial nor travail, neither heartache nor loss … 

With caution, with patience, and kindness, never scolding anyone for feeling bad … never wagging a finger at anyone who’s discouraged … or blame anyone, for being in the Valley of the Shadow of Death … 

Preachers and priests can scold … but not so the Bible.

Not so the God and Father of our LORD Jesus Christ.

God walks with the wounded.

God rests with the weary.

God takes the hand of the lonely.

God waits for those who cannot go another step.

God is present within all the bleak and dreary corners of life.

On that day in Babylon, a vision: God takes Ezekiel to a valley, bleak and dreary, full of dry, dry, bones …

Can these bones live again? asks God.

What can Ezekiel say?

I imagine his face, a face drawn down by fatigue, a soul broken and bleeding … 

With a shrug of the shoulders, Ezekiel mumbles, Only you know, LORD … only you know!

Is this a statement of faith?

Or resignation?

I’m not sure what it is … I suspect it’s a shred of faith, a remnant of former days … what was earlier formed in Ezekiel’s childhood, the liturgies of the Temple … the songs of Zion … at his mother’s knee, at his fathers’s side.

But now? … what’s left?

A shrug of the shoulders, a bit of a mumble, Only you know, LORD … only you know.

And God says, Let me show you what I can do.

And with that, suddenly, a noise … bones and sinews, flesh and blood, come into being … 

Creation, all over again … when God, like a child playing with dirt, took a fistful and shaped it into a little figure.

God took that little figure and held it close to God’s face, and with a puff of breath, God breathed life into that little lump of dirt … and that day, God said, 

I created a remarkable being of dirt and divinity … 

for the dirt, mortal … 

mortal to the core, 

subject to all the infirmities and limits of flesh and bone … 

but driven by divinity, by impossible dreams, 

incredible hope, 

infinite reach for the stars above 

and the courts of heaven beyond … 

this creature of dirt and divinity 

will carry great burdens, 

experience untold joys and great pleasure, 

and will learn how to weep … 

this creature of dirt and divinity will do horrible things, and great things … 

this creature of dirt and divinity will harm and hurt … and heal and help …

 it will pray, it will curse; 

it will build, it will destroy; 

it will celebrate the truth, and tell big lies … 

it will be great, it will be terrible … it will be beautiful, it will be frightening; 

it will be a human being, a creature of dirt and divinity.

Can the bones, the dry, dry, bones, live again?

It’s the question of the ages …

Will Syria and Turkey rebuild?

Will the war in Ukraine come to an end?

Will our sadness find a way through?

Will our dreams come true?

It may take years … it may take ages … maybe only in eternity … 

It’s all held together … in Christ our LORD.

the dirt and the divinity … 

the visible and the invisible … 

all of time, all of eternity … 

the smallest elements of creation, and the distant of stars … 

the next moment, and billions and billions and billions of light years …

As I was putting all of this together … thinking, reading, writing … pondering the stories of Lent, thinking about all of you … my own life, my family, my stories …

This came to mind:

You can do it.

I believe in you.

You have the ability to make your world.

You will recover.

You will find your way.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

In the name of the Mother, the Daughter, and their Divine Presence.

In the name of all that’s good and beautiful and true.

In the name of every child’s hope, every child’s dream, every child’s love …

Yes, Yes, and Yes!

Hallelujah and Amen!

10.9.22 "Truth & Lies" Westminster Presbyterian Church, Pasadena, CA

Jeremiah 29.1, 4-9; 2 Timothy 2.8-15

A good friend cancelled his cable network … he said: “too much propaganda, everywhere!”

Another friend told me, “I’ve cut way back on my reading … too disturbing, too frightening.”

Someone else said, “I don’t wanna hear anymore about climate change, stolen elections, or whatever. I don’t know what to think.”

None of it’s easy … all of it demanding … confusion is real … who knows how to sort it all out!

Like looking in your cupboard late at night, when all you want is a bowl of cereal, and there isn’t any, so you decide to make a late-night run to your all-night grocery store, to get a box of cereal … and there you are, in the cereal aisle … hundreds of brands, hundreds of boxes … fruit or no fruit, sweet or not-so-sweet, gluten-free, organic, extra vitamins … and all you want is a late-night snack.

The times in which we live … floods of information … claims and counter-claims …

What’s the truth, what are the lies?

Is there anyway of sorting it out?

Important questions come our way every day … 

Big questions - what does it mean to be a Christian? What kind of nation shall we be? Who ya’ gonna vote for? Who do you believe? Who do you trust?

Is there anyway of working our way through it all?  

I believe there is … some basic elements help me … and maybe can help you, too … and for that, our reading this morning from Jeremiah.

The book of Jeremiah has always meant a great deal to me!

Jeremiah was my “first love” in seminary.

I was attracted to Jeremiah’s honesty - he doesn’t sugarcoat the situation … he tells the truth, and it’s a hard truth now and then.

Nor does he sugarcoat his own confusion and discouragement … Jeremiah has no pleasure in telling the truth … no pleasure in confronting those who tell the big lies … no pleasure at all … Jeremiah finally gets angry at God, angry for calling  him to these tasks … he’d rather be left alone, cancel his cable subscription, and he doesn’t wanna go to the cereal aisle anymore.

Jeremiah is honest to the core, serious about life … reluctantly, Jeremiah takes up the task to offer counsel to God’s people in a time of distress and dislocation.

It’s the Babylonian Captivity, the great upheaval … Judah has been defeated … crushed by the superior power of Babylon … farmers and merchants allowed to stay in the land, but leaders and teachers removed, bankers and politicians, kings and queens, taken to Babylon in chains … a brilliant strategy, to smash resistance, to keep an eye on the troublemakers … it was a terrible defeat for Judah.

Psalm 137 was written in those terrible days:

By the rivers of Babylon - there we sat down and there we wept, when we remembered Zion.

On the willows there we hung up our harps … how could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?

The Psalm ends with some of the most bitter words imaginable:

O daughter Babylon, you devastator. Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!

No wonder the captives in Babylon were ready to believe a lie!

“A lie?” you ask.

Yes, desperate times create spiritual and emotional vulnerability; people are ready to believe just about anything that offers some form of escape … and there are always folks ready and able to tell a lie or two, charlatans, flimflam artists, hungry politicians; irresponsible preachers.

The false prophets went to work, and said to the people - “It won’t be long; God will come to our rescue and take us all back home.” They all chanted, “Make Judah Great Again! Make Judah Great Again!”

God said to Jeremiah, “Confront the false prophets. Call them out for what they are. They are liars. They are misleading my people. There is no going back. My people have to face the truth; they’ll be in Babylon for awhile. But tell them: they can still make a life for themselves. I am with them, in their exile. I am with them in the hardest part of life. I have not abandoned my people. I will see them through the terror.

Jeremiah and the false prophets both speak of God … but who’s telling the truth?

If I support a woman’s right to choose, and someone else calls me a baby-killer, is there anyway of sorting it out? 

If I support the separation of church and state, and someone says God never intended it that way; God intended Christians to rule, how do we work our way through that? 

When I affirm marriage rites for gays and lesbians, and someone else calls them an abomination, and tells me that I’m a heretic, bound for hell, how do we figure it out? 

Here are some thoughts that help me sort things out.

Lies often revolve around God, country, and family … lies talk about tightening the borders, writing new laws, preserving morality, fighting sin … 

Meanwhile, truth crosses borders … truth says, God so loved the world … truth reminds us to be careful in our judgments and mindful of God’s tremendous grace. 

Lies are quick to pick up the stones, but it’s Jesus who points to something better, and sets the woman free.

Lies tell people to look to the past … truth looks to the future. Jesus says, If you put your hand to the plow, don’t look back.

Lies build on fear and suspicion; truth builds on trust and confidence.

Lies frequently have to do with wealth … who has it, who gets it, who keeps it … truth is generous in nature … truth shares rather than takes … truth is the cup of cold water, rather than the coin of betrayal.

Lies need enemies; truth finds allies and friends.

Lies offer “easy answers" … truth knows, life is complicated.

Lies rattle the saber … truth tells Peter to put his sword away.

Lies have a Golden Calf; truth has The Ten Commandments.

Lies need folks to live in a bubble - one issue, one focus, one purpose … truth welcomes diversity … truth is a like a diamond, with many facets … lies eliminate the need to think; truth demands that we think, and think hard. 

Lies multiply … today’s lie requires another lie tomorrow … truth is steady, truth is consistent. Lies promise the moon; truth reminds us, God never promises us a rose garden.

Why is this important?

Because we’re Christians - followers of Christ, the way, the truth, and the life … it is our task, our responsibility, to know the truth, defend the truth, speak the truth, do the truth. 

Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God. 

Amen and Amen! 

February 17, 2013, "Things that Destroy"

Genesis 3.1-8, 21-24; Romans 7.13-25

By the rivers of Babylon … hearts broken, and there we wept … no music left in us … all is gone … 

Like all good parents, they wondered what their children would believe. 

Will our children opt for the gods of Babylon? Will the power of Babylon win them over?

What can we say?

What good does it do to talk about ancient military victories when our armies are no more?

What good does it do to talk about kings and queens when, in the end, all of their palace politics brought us nothing but sorrow?

What good does it do to talk about the beauty of the temple when that temple lies in ruins?

What good does it do to talk about Yahweh when we languish here in a strange land, the laughing stock of the nations … they look upon us with haughty eyes and ask, Where is your god now?

What can we believe about God, life and hope, faith and love? What can we tell our children? What do we tell ourselves?

Crisis of faith prompted big questions!

And from that crisis of faith flow the words of Genesis.

The ancient writers and poets, taken into Exile crafted the first chapter of Genesis, and then put the whole book together … to express the deepest faith in God … a faith beyond their own personal story … a faith larger than the moment … larger than Babylon … larger than Israel and Judah … larger than tears and sorrow … a god their children can believe in … a god worthy of their time … a god for the best of times, and most importantly, a god for the worst of times.

The ancient writers crafted and assembled a collection of documents that were to become the foundation of Judah’s hope for a new day … the Hebrew Bible … the Bible that Jesus studied, loved and memorized … the Bible that guided Paul the Apostle and his work … the Bible early Christians quoted to one another, and the words they used in prayer and worship … the Hebrew Bible … what we commonly call the Old Testament … 

To answer the big questions:

Is there a story bigger than our own story of sorrow and defeat?

Is there a god bigger than the gods of Israel and Judah … our gods failed, but perhaps we failed to really understand God?

Is there a god bigger than the gods of Babylon, the gods of Alexander the great, and the gods of the Roman Empire and their mighty armies?

Is there a god our children can believe in and trust?

The writers and thinkers and theologians penned Genesis 1, In the beginning … before Abraham and Sarah, before Israel and Judah, before Assyrian and Babylon … before everything and anything, God.

And there is darkness all about … plenty of darkness, and chaos, too … dark waters and darker night.

But God says, Let there be light.

A gentle light for the night - moon and stars … bright light for the day, the sun, golden and warm.

In the darkness, light … 

The biggest story of all … 

But the Hebrews are no one’s fool … light there is, the light of God, and the light of hope, the light of God’s mercy, the light of love … lots of light … but still the darkness.

Death and sorrow, war and hatred … we have a million ways of hurting ourselves, hurting those we love … a million ways for destroying what God made … a million ways to make it dark even when God creates the light.

So the ancient writers told the story of Genesis 3 … a clever creature comes along and raises questions about the trustworthiness of God … 

That’s always the question, isn’t it?

Can God be trusted?

The ancient writers sometimes wondered … just like we do.

Abraham and Sarah wondered if God would deliver on the promise on a son.

Jeremiah the prophet accused God of betrayal.

Job accused God of cruelty.

Jesus hanging on the cross wonders if God has abandoned him?

And in such moments, danger …

The Book of Genesis lays it all out - Judah tries to figure out: What happened to us? Why did we get here, in Babylon, drowning in our own tears?

WHAT went wrong?

We overreached our grasp, they said … we ate the fruit of the tree that rightly belongs only to God.

We wanted more … we loved armies and kings, power and glory; we despised enemies, thought we were better than everyone else, thought we had god on our side.

But it all fell apart … 

Judah had to rewrite its own story … 

And part of the story - things that destroy … 

We thought god would always protect the Holy City and preserve the throne of David … but, no, we were wrong … God is very different than what we thought.

Judah had to come up with a new story to fit the times and build a road to the future … the past was gone; long gone. No since crying over spilled beer, as they say … no sense looking back - look what happens to Lot’s wife … no, the only way out of this is the way forward, new ideas, new ways of doing things … the old is gone; gone forever … and that’s okay … because God is taking us to new places … it hurts to go where God is taking us, but we have to go where God leads.

A local church was having some issues, so they invited a consultant who, they hoped, could help them find new purpose.

The consultant arrived in January, when the Ladies Association was beginning a new year - new officers and a new program booklet for the next twelve months, listing times and places, programs and people, luncheons and dinners and Bible Studies.

And it was their fortieth year.

In the fellowship hall, laid out on a table, all the program booklets from the last forty years - an impressive sight - red booklets, green booklets, yellow booklets and blue.

The consultant picked up the first booklet - an old mimeographed booklet stapled together with red construction paper - and began to read the names of the leaders and the programs for the year to come. The consultant was impressed.

So the consultant read the second booklet … then the third, the 10^th booklet, the 25^th, and then the last booklet, the 40^th booklet on the table … she was shocked to see that in the last 40 years, nothing had changed - same programs, same schedule, same topics, same restaurants - and many of the names were the same, too.

Judah had to face a painful truth:

We didn’t change! 

Our god grew smaller and smaller every year for us … and we grew smaller, too.

Our prophets warned us, but we put ‘em in prison, we drove them out, we killed them. We stopped thinking, we stopped growing.

Judah learned a hard lesson - those who will not CHOOSE the future, are HAMMERED by the future when it arrives … for Judah, the future looked like an enemy, a Babylonian soldier, but God said to the people, Even Babylon is my servant.

In the Genesis story, Adam and Eve are driven from the Garden, just like Judah driven from Jerusalem - there’s no going back … angels on the east side of the Garden bar the way with flaming swords.

There’s no going back to Eden, no going back to Egypt, no going back to Jerusalem.

But there’s a clue in the text: fertile land OUTSIDE the garden! Good earth! 

We will make it, and so will our children.

God’s people need the greater story … of a god much greater than we could ever imagine.

The creator-god, the god of heaven and earth - greater than our own story, greater than Israel and Judah, greater than David and Solomon … greater than the temple … greater than Calvary Presbyterian Church, greater than the United States of America … greater than all the nations of the world and all the religions of world … greater even than Christianity itself.

As long as God remains big for us, we will be big, too … big in courage, to face the future … with creativity, to find new ways of serving the LORD … and love … love for one another, no matter what … love that transcends boundaries of race and creed … love greater than we could ever imagine.

Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven, to earth come down; fix in us thy humble dwelling; all thy faithful mercies crown!  

Jesus thou art all compassion, pure, unbounded love thou art; visit us with thy salvation; enter every trembling heart. 

Amen and Amen!