Who Is to Blame?

Psalm 63:1-8; Luke 13:1-9 

Jesus is asked a great many questions in the book of Luke. Most of the time he answers with a story or a parable or another question. But in the passage [...]]]> So … does God send disasters to punish people?  Here’s what Jesus had to say about that …

Who Is to Blame?

Psalm 63:1-8; Luke 13:1-9 

Jesus is asked a great many questions in the book of Luke. Most of the time he answers with a story or a parable or another question. But in the passage we just heard this morning, he twice answers clearly and succinctly: “No.”

(These are, by the way, the only time in Luke’s gospel where he answers a question this way.)

The two questions are good ones – the kind of questions that we raise ourselves (though perhaps we don’t always voice them). Both ask this: does suffering come to people who are sinners as punishment for their sins? Did they bring it on themselves? And the hidden question, of course, is more personal: Am I at risk for some kind of disaster because of my behavior? The people asking the question have two different examples that they bring to Jesus: first, about some Galileans who were slain by Pilate while they were making sacrifices; and second, about eighteen people who died when a tower fell in Siloam. We don’t know anything else about these two events – but we have plenty of experience with unexpected tragedies where the loss of life seems arbitrary and capricious. So – were the Galileans and people of Siloam (or the people of Haiti or Chile or New Orleans …) more sinful than everyone else?

“No,” says Jesus. Twice he says it: “no.”

That’s the part we want to hear, especially when we are people who are suffering – when it is our loved one who was killed in a random shooting or our friend who died in a freak accident. We want to be reassured that they are not responsible – that we are not responsible – for the suffering that takes place.

Or do we? Because there is another part of us that wants very very much to have an explanation for the suffering. We want there to be meaning for us in terrible events – even if it is difficult or unpleasant meaning. We want to be in control, or at least partly in control, of the dangers that are around us. We want to be able to fend off those dangers, but if we can’t do that, we want at least one a clear explanation. We would rather be guilty (or know who is guilty) than live with an unexplained tragedy.

That tension between wanting to know that “it is not my fault,” on the one hand, and wanting to believe that “it is somebody’s fault” on the other hand is a recurring and confusing one in the bible as well as in our own lives. We hear the observations of the prophets that the people of Israel have been defeated and exiled because of their disobedience. We hear (in the psalms) the troubling truth that often the wicked do just fine and the responsible people are left wanting. And we hear Jesus saying, “No,” the ones who suffered and died were no worse than the rest of you.

Jesus doesn’t stop with his “No.” He goes on (twice): “…but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” [Luke 13:3 and 13:5] That sounds – at least the first time you hear it – like a seriously mixed message, something like “it’s not their fault, but if you don’t shape up, you’re going to get it.”

I think this is a complicated message – but not about fault or guilt or responsibility. I believe that the “No” of Jesus is terribly important. It is the text with which we refute the religious leaders who blame the people of Haiti and the people of Chile for the terrible tragedies that have overtaken them. It is the text we turn to when someone is the victim of a violent crime or a terrible disease. it is the text we remember when we are tempted – like Job’s friends – to believe that we must have done something wrong to “deserve” the suffering in our lives.

It is the text we should remember because it says more than just “no.” It says “No” while at the same time reminding us that our lives are full of opportunities to repent. We are, in many ways, headed in the wrong direction and need desperately to turn around, to repent, to change our hearts and go in a new direction. Put more colloquially, “you aren’t responsible for all your own suffering, but there are a lot of things you could be doing more virtuously and faithfully than you are now.”

We would really rather not hear that word of judgment. Not that we don’t know the ways our lives fall short of our own aspirations, let along God’s aspirations for us. We are not as generous, not as kind, not as forgiving as we might be. We tolerate all kinds of injustices – some out of our own self-interest and others out of distraction or exhaustion. We ignore God more often than we intend to. We act out of attitudes that are biased, selfish, and narrow, and we resist changing those attitudes, even when the evidence of our own lives contradicts them. We are, in short, something of a mess.

At the same time, we don’t want Jesus – or anyone else – to be judgmental about all of those shortcomings and sins. We don’t want to be told that we are “bad people,” even if we suspect that might be true; we don’t want to be told that we should be doing a lot better, even if we secretly know that we should.

I believe that this warning, this “but” in the words of Jesus, is not so much judgmental as it is prophetic. Jesus does not sentence us to punishment, he proclaims the truth of what is in plain view: if we live in ways that exploit, destroy, and separate, we are perishing. We are spending our lives in the ways of death and not in the ways of life.

All of this leaves us with our first question unanswered though: why did those terrible things happen to the Galileans and the people of Siloam? And why do terrible things happen to people today? There is no single answer, of course. Some tragedies are caused by poor judgment and selfish choices, by human emotional frailty and human intellectual limitations. But there are great many tragedies for which we cannot answer this question at all. Earthquakes happen, and tsunamis and hurricanes and avalanches. Diseases exist, and so do disabilities and chronic conditions and mental illnesses. Disasters and accidents are often mysteries that will not yield answers to our queries or comfort to our laments.

The simple truth is that God doesn’t have to send tragedies and disasters to teach us about the consequences of our broken and sinful behavior. The natural consequences are perfectly obvious all around us: corrupt organizations, disordered relationships with both persons and substances, economic exploitation, anger and resentment and bigotry and hate. If we listen to the voices of prophets – both ancient and modern – we know what we have to do; we have to repent.

Repentance is not always easy; it requires that we turn our spiritual faces in a new direction. It means turning away from habits and behaviors that are familiar and towards actions that are unfamiliar and uncomfortable. It means letting go of ideas and convictions we have held for a long time, and which may have served us well in the past. It means opening our hearts to new possibilities.

Here’s the cross-stitch version of repentance – an adage that I embroidered many years ago, before I realized it was really a theological statement: “The only way to change is to do something different.” The clear “no” that we hear from Jesus frees us to stop trying to blame disasters on other people’s sin, and to start preventing the pain and suffering that results from our own.

Prayer for March 7, 2010

Almighty and everlasting God, creator of all things seen and unseen, hear now our silent prayers, as we open our hearts to you in the sacred quietness.

God of faith and hope, we bring before you our prayers for those we have named this morning – we especially remember … Bring to each of them the gifts of mercy and grace that are most needed, according to your wisdom and love.

God of strength and resilience, we are weary as we pray, and so today we pray about our weariness

We are weary in our bodies: tired from doing too much, moving too fast, resting too little. We have forgotten your gift of Sabbath, of the day to renew and refresh ourselves. Even our relaxation seems to take a lot of planning and energy. Help us, we pray, to return to the Sabbath, to take time where we set aside our responsibilities, our work, our busyness. Let us find the holy time where we can enjoy one another and rest in you.

We are weary also in our minds. The technology that brings us information also overloads our ability to understand and assimilate that information. We are tired of hearing so much news, exhausted by the complexity of the world, overwhelmed by too many ideas, too many faces, too many choices. And so we pray this morning for a mental Sabbath as well as a physical one. Let us find the holy time where we can stop the whirling in our heads and ponder the things that invite wonder and appreciation more than understanding.

Our hearts, too, are weary, O God of compassion. Our eyes are filled with the images of people in need: the lonely and the homeless, the addicted and the hungry, the despairing and the confused, the sick and the wounded. Our capacity to respond feels so inadequate to all those needs, and we tire under the weight of our own limitations. Strengthen us, we pray; give us the discipline to choose where we shall invest our energies and our gifts, and the humility to know when we have done all we can.

We confess, O Holy One, that even our spirits are sometimes weary. We ask you to build up this community of faith so that we can nourish and refresh one another. Weave us together with threads of encouragement, wisdom, good humor, and understanding, into a fabric of strength, resiliency, and beauty. Then let this fabric bedeck and protect us in all that we do.

These prayers we offer in the name of the one who calls the weary and offers us rest and the sharing of our burdens, even Jesus the Christ, and we pray together in the words that he taught us ….

Tempted … Again …

Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16; Luke 4: 1-13 

The devil asked Jesus the question we would like to ask him: Who are you, really? And because [...]]]> When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, he didn’t seem to agonize over what to do.  I wonder what we can learn from his encounter with these temptations …

Tempted … Again …

Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16; Luke 4: 1-13 

The devil asked Jesus the question we would like to ask him: Who are you, really? And because he was the devil, he phrased the question in a provocative way: If are the Son of God, then …” He made it sound as if everyone knew what the Son of God would think and do, and so the only question was whether Jesus would meet those expectations or not.

Would Jesus’ behavior match the truth of his inner being?

Well, Jesus was used to devilish questions, and he was not fooled by this one. He knew that what was wrong with the Devil’s question was not about him, but about what everyone thought they knew about the Son of God. Everyone knew that the Son of God would be able to perform miracles, and would be a mighty ruler, and would be able to do supernatural deeds.

But Jesus did not answer the Devil by arguing about the public understanding of the Son of God. Instead he answered the Devil’s challenges by offering an alternate view of how the Son of God would act. The Son of God would not be ruled by his own hungers; the Son of God would not worship anyone but God; the Son of God would not put God to a trivial test. That’s who the Son of God would be.

I think it is important to notice, too, that Jesus did not engage in a mighty act of self-control to resist the temptations that were put to him. His responses in the wilderness were not full of agonized effort. Instead, his responses were drawn from a rich familiarity with words of scripture – words that defined for him who he really was. His resistance to temptation didn’t come from being virtuous or strong-willed or from worry about possible negative consequences; his resistance came from a clear understanding of his own essence. Jesus answered the devil’s questions – but as he would so often do in his ministry, he answered without getting trapped by the form of the questions. The devil asked Jesus who he really was, and Jesus answered.

The temptations that come to us come in that same form: they ask us who we really are. Are we really persons who work for peace? Are we really people who value the truth? Are we really people of compassion, healing, and reconciliation? Are we who we say that we are?

We hope, of course, that the answer to all of those questions is “yes.” We hope that when we are faced with temptation, we will affirm our convictions by acting in accordance with our most cherished beliefs and values. We hope that we are people of integrity – that our outer behavior is consistent with our inner ideals. And often, that is true; there is a congruity between our inner and our outer lives.

I want to propose this morning that the congruity between our inner selves and our outer selves is theologically important as well as ethically important. The theological issue about Jesus is incarnation: the true and living presence of God embodied in human form. For Jesus to be the incarnation of God – the en-flesh-ment of the divine – his inner and outer selves had to be one. For him to be the incarnation of God, Jesus had to be clear what it mean to be himself, and then he had to behave in those ways. In my reading of the gospels, Jesus grew into that understanding and into that behavior; moreover, like all human beings, he sometimes embodied God’s self more consistently and effectively than other times.

I believe the issue of incarnation is also our issue – though in a somewhat different way. When we are faced by a temptation – by a moral or ethical dilemma – when we are faced by temptation, we are being asked whether or not we are going to regulate our behavior according to the values we purport to hold. Sometimes the question is asked in a positive and encouraging way, as parents do when we are teaching our children. Sometimes it is asked in a negative and subversive way, as though it was coming from the same devil who tempted Jesus. Either way, the question is clear: are we who say that we are?

When the answer is yes, we can act with confidence and some satisfaction. When the answer is no, we have two choices: we can change our behavior, or we can change our idea of who we are.

Much of the time we conclude that the issue is our behavior. Like St. Paul, we lament that we do not do what we mean to do, and we do do what we intended not to do. We resolve to change our behavior to match our inner standard of behavior and our inner vision of the kind of person we are supposed to be. We use words like “trying harder” and “being more consistent,” and “cleaning up our act.” We are, I am afraid, rather harsh with ourselves, and then disappointed that we are not more successful.

We might well notice that Jesus did none of those things when he was tempted by the devil. He did not try harder or attempt to be more consistent or commit himself to cleaning up his act. What he did was to challenge the idea of what he was “supposed to be,” and substitute a more authentic, faithful version of what he was “called to be.”

I think that might describe the spiritual journey, the formation of faith: moving from what you are supposed to be, believe, and do, to what you are called to be, believe and do. Temptation is perilously close to vocation, and our task is more often discerning between the two than it is simply overcoming the former.

I need to pause for a moment here to notice that we don’t use the word “temptation” very often in our everyday speech these days. When we do use it, we are more likely to be talking about chocolate than about adultery or economic exploitation. We have trivialized the word “temptation” until it refers only to the small guilty pleasures that are not of much consequence in our lives or in our world. We also sometimes talk about being “tempted” by a larger TV, a smaller cell phone, or a more luxurious home. These enticing items are not in themselves temptations, but they are often clothed in the language of temptation by those who advertise them – the promise that we will be happier, smarter, or more admired if we own them.

But the significant temptations in our lives are those that leave us wondering whether we are being tempted or called. If a young person longs for travel and adventure, is an opportunity for overseas mission work at temptation to get a free trip or a call to use that longing for the good of others? If a manager finds meaning in leading her organization to growth and prosperity, is that a temptation to feed her own ego or a call to use her skill for the benefit of those she works for? If a man chooses to leave the academic world and turn to farming, has he succumbed to the temptation to squander his intellectual gifts or heeded the call to return to a more grounded way of living?

Those are not questions of moral strength or resolve; those are questions of spiritual discernment. Answering them requires investing our prayers, our spirits, and our minds in careful discernment – discernment that is genuinely open to any answer that we may find. But we are not entirely on our own in that discernment. We have the wisdom of our religious tradition, the attention of our faith community, and the companionship of the Holy Spirit as we sort out the complicated landscape of our own motivations, rationalizations and vocations.

All of this is to say that when we face a temptation, the way out of our personal and ethical dilemma may not be to change our behavior; it may be to chance the convictions upon which we stand. That is why I believe so deeply in the importance of ongoing faith formation for people of all ages. The questions that tempt us, challenge us, and potentially call us do not abate as we move through life. On the contrary, new questions arise at every turn; the process of discernment is not something that we use once or twice in life in times of crisis. The process of discernment is something that we use every day to have lives of integrity, meaning, and wholeness.

So the devil asked Jesus the question we want to ask him: Who are you, really? But Jesus asks us the question we must ask ourselves: Who are we, really? Are we those who are captive to temptation, or those who are liberated by vocation?

Amen.

Prayer for February 28, 2010

Almighty and everlasting God, creator of all things seen and unseen, hear now our silent prayers, as we open our hearts to you in the sacred quietness.

God of faith and hope, we bring before you our prayers for those we have named this morning – we especially remember … Bring to each of them the gifts of mercy and grace that are most needed, according to your wisdom and love.

God of every season, we come to you this morning with our winter prayers.

We pray first for our neighbors for whom the winter weather is a hardship and a threat, rather than just an inconvenience. We particularly remember those who have no homes, and those whose dwellings are neither warm nor safe. Let the hard winter weather remind us of your call to provide shelter for one another.

We also pray for those who need shelter of other kinds – those who suffer from mental illness or love someone who does; those who suffer from addictions or alcoholism, or love someone who does; those who are lost in anger, despair, or sadness, or who love someone who is. Bring to all of these, we pray, the comfort of your presence and your holy protection during times of healing and reconciliation. Help the rest of us gather in a community that offers hope and strength in times of discouragement, and that promotes healthy ways of living together and meeting life’s challenges.

We remember this morning that you are as close to us during the dark and windy days as you are during the bright and calm ones. Open our spirits to recognizing you as we move through our everyday lives; show yourself to us even when we are preoccupied or distracted.

And help us, we pray, to notice the cold and wintry parts of our own lives – the times we fail to offer hospitality to the stranger, the times we hoard our treasures instead of sharing them, the times we stay safely by the hearth instead of pushing out into the world. Where we are frozen in indecision, paralyzed in uncertainty, and stuck in our old habits, blow the fire of your Holy Spirit on us, to thaw out our reluctance and warm up our resolve.

Oh Holy One, we know in our minds that winter is a blessing for the earth; help us to see that it is a blessing for us, too.

We ask all this in the name of the one who brings light even in the season of darkness, even Jesus the Christ, and we pray together in the words that he taught us …

Optical Illuminations

Exodus 34:29-35; Luke 9:28-36 

I thought a lot about the title of this sermon. Early this week I settled [...]]]> The story of Jesus’ transfiguration has a lot to teach us, even if we are discomforted by the mysterious details. (The original title of this sermon was “Optical Illuminations,” but you’ll see why I changed it.)

Optical Illuminations

Exodus 34:29-35; Luke 9:28-36 

I thought a lot about the title of this sermon. Early this week I settled on “Optical Illuminations,” because I wasn’t sure I wanted to go out on a limb with the title that was really in my head – “Optional Illuminations.” But that’s the question that wouldn’t leave me alone these last few days: Do I have to believe this story about mysterious lights, ghostly appearances, and words from heaven?

Do I have to believe this really happened to be a Christian? Or is this particular illumination an optional part of our faith?

I don’t want to keep you in suspense! I do not think you have to believe that this event happened in precisely the way it is reported in the New Testament in order to be a Christian; I do believe that your Christian faith will be deepened if you acknowledge that this story was preserved for us in the gospels because it is important.

If you stop to think about it, God does not appear in person very often in the New Testament. We heard a voice from heaven when Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan; we heard a voice from heaven during the Transfiguration; and we heard a voice speaking to Paul when he was struck blind on the road to Damascus. There are some messengers: angels who spoke to Zechariah and Mary and the shepherds “abiding in the fields and keeping watch over their flocks by night;” and whatever spoke to Joseph and the Magi in their dreams. That’s about it.

And if you stop to think about it, one of the chief reasons that people join religious communities and undertake spiritual practices and study theological ideas is because they want to be in touch with God. So we can’t help being a little surprised that the New Testament not only doesn’t tell us how to do that, it doesn’t even give us very many examples of people who do it. There is surprisingly little mysticism in the Bible.

I am using the word “mysticism” in a general way here, to describe those experiences that individuals have so much difficulty in describing and explaining. From time to time for most of us (and fairly often for a few of us), we encounter the holy in some way. One of my own experiences of this is the realization that a thought or belief has come into my consciousness that I did not generate. I have done a lot of thinking in my life, and I know what it feels like to think up something, so I feel pretty confident in saying that these mysterious thoughts are coming from somewhere – or someone – else. But I am as incoherent as the rest of you in naming the source. I am inclined to name them (when I do name them) as coming from the Holy Spirit; somehow that sounds less outlandish than saying they come from God.

I expect that most of you have had mystical experiences – moments of transcendence, moments of great holiness, moment when you are in the presence of the sacred. It is sad, I think, that we don’t talk much about them, even in church (or perhaps, especially in church …) Mystical experiences feed our faith in a variety of ways. For me, these experiences give the feeling of being remembered and loved by God. Other people are moved to acts of compassion, inspired to create works of art, reminded of their deepest values, or refreshed in their human relationships.

Still, most of us are not full-time mystics. Most of our days are spent immersed in the here-and-now, sustained by memories of those holy moments, or resting on the sacred stories told in scripture and by those whose books we read and words we listen to, and those who share with us the adventure of their faith journeys.

I said a moment ago that God does not often appear in person in the New Testament. And while that is true in the literal sense, I don’t want leave the impression that God is not present in these texts. On the contrary; God presence is heard in the teachings of Jesus, is seen in the healings and miracles of the gospels, is attested to by the writers of the epistles, and is described in vivid and strange images in the book of Revelation. One way to understand all of these manifestations of God’s presence is to think of them all as kinds of prophesy – not of fortune telling or predictions, but of truth-telling. The bible reveals truths to us that would otherwise remain hidden in plain sight.

Consider the story of Jesus going to the mountain with Peter, James, and John. These three disciples had known and followed Jesus for some time by the day this story takes place, and we might imagine that they have pondered and discussed among themselves the remarkable way that he was connected to God. They surely must have noticed his habits of study and prayer, and the assurance with which he preached the good news of God’s mercy and justice.

But they hadn’t imagined anything like what they saw on the mountain that day. They hadn’t imagined Jesus in the company of Moses and Elijah; they hadn’t imagined Jesus physically changed so that he appeared to be made up of light; they hadn’t imagined hearing a voice from heaven claiming Jesus as son. Even though he had been right in front of their eyes all along, they didn’t see all of his holiness, or his connection with the great men of the history of the Jewish people, until that moment.

One of the traditional interpretations of this story is that the presence of Moses symbolized the Law and the presence of Elijah symbolized the prophets. That’s fine as far as it goes – but it ignores altogether the remarkable fact that they appeared on a mountaintop centuries after their physical deaths. This interpretation ignores the fact that Moses was about much more than just the tablets with the Ten Commandments – the fact that he was all about God’s justice in delivering the people from slavery. This stale interpretation ignores the fact that justice ran smack into mysticism that day, and religion hasn’t been the same since.

So here’s why I think this story is so important: it instructs us that a fully faithful life is grounded in justice and mysticism. Every religious community must give due attention to both to have vitality and direction. And every spiritually seeking person must give due attention to both to mature in the faith. All too often these two are put in opposition to one another – as though people committed to justice were way too busy to give any time to spiritual practice, meditation, or prayer, and as though people with spiritual depth and mystical experience were too unworldly to care about justice.

I want to insist that these two are not alternative ways of faith; they are complementary ways of faith. If we want to keep our commitment to justice lively and vibrant, we must attend to the spiritual practices that open us to mystic moments and anchor our faith. If we want to mystically experience God’s presence directly and powerfully, we have to stay engaged with the works of justice that are close to God’s heart.

Communities of faith and persons of faith are always engaged in this tension – between the reflective and the active, between the piety and the praxis, between the prophetic and the mystical. Because it is a tension, we are often pulled to one side or the other by our personalities, or by the customs of our time and place, or by the demands of the challenges that face us. And because it is a tension, we often need reminders to attend to the side that is less comfortable, less conventional, and more difficult.

So it is an important story, this odd tale of mountains and light and heavenly presence. It is the drama that forces us to acknowledge our potential for mysticism (even if that is rare or disconcerting) and our potential for prophesy (even if that is rare or disconcerting). And if the story were less strange, less laden with symbolism, less woven into the fabric of history, it would not command our attention in the way it needs to. So there it is. The details are optional, but the illumination is not.

Amen.

Praying [...]]]> This prayer was thoughtfully written by the children in the grades 4, 5 and 6 Sunday school class who participated with Feed My Starving Children, last fall.  In response to the tragedy befalling the people of Haiti, they have made bean soup mix to sell to our congregation with the proceeds going to relief efforts.

Praying for the World

God of all people and places,

We know that you care about all that is wrong in our world.

Therefore, we pray for all the people who have suffered

Losses from the earthquake in Haiti.

We also pray for those who are helping them.

Jesus teaches us of your love.  Help us to make a difference

By giving what we can to the people of Haiti,

and helping them to know that you are with them.

Help us to show your healing love through giving and loving,

Helping those who are hurt,

And working at Feed My Starving Children. 

Amen.

Deep Water

Isaiah 6:1-8; Luke 5:1-11

About two weeks before my friend Katherine Mulhern and I left for seminary – she to Eden Seminary in St. Louis and I to Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley [...]]]> What do these things have in common:  Church camp, Muir Woods, and Jesus helping the disciples fish?  Find out here <grin>!

Deep Water

Isaiah 6:1-8; Luke 5:1-11

About two weeks before my friend Katherine Mulhern and I left for seminary – she to Eden Seminary in St. Louis and I to Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley – we drove across the state of Washington to our beloved church camp on the shores of Lake Coeur d’Alene just over the state line in Idaho. Our friend and pastor Todd Wyrick was just finishing a week with the Senior High Camp, and he had promised to give us a blessing for our journeys.

He walked around the camp with us, offering a few words about each of the places we loved – the porch on the lodge, our favorite cabin, the campfire circle, the path to the beach. When we got to the boating pier, he walked out to the end and said something like this: “This pier goes into the deep water. That’s where you want to be if you are going to dive deeply. The water of faith is deep enough for you to dive as deeply as you can.”

I thought of those words often when I was in seminary. They nudged me into taking a dance class (yes! a dance class) my first semester, and into classes on spirituality and prayer, on science and religion; they nudged me to the Allen Temple Baptist Church one Good Friday to hear seven sermons preached by seven women, because (as the pastor put it in his introduction), women were last at the cross and first at the tomb.

Jesus believed in deep water, too, as we learned in today’s reading from the gospel of Luke. Simon and James and John all became disciples after Jesus directed them to fish in the deep water.

I believe the church is about deep water. I believe that the church is a place where we can dive deeply. The deep water of the church comes from the long tradition of spiritual nurture. Our ancestors, all the way back to the church of the first century, have discerned and passed along to us the texts and practices that give depth to our community. For our part, we do the work of building community – making acquaintance, building trust, and sharing burdens – that contribute to that depth.

Some of our diving is chosen – we join a Bible study group or a Men’s or Women’s group because we want to delve more deeply into the study of scripture or the exploration of spirituality. We may begin expecting to be comforted or reassured, and instead find that deepening our faith is challenging and sometimes disorienting. Or we may begin thinking that our study will help us find the answers to life’s big questions, and instead we find that it leads us to new and even bigger questions.

Some of our diving is not chosen. It happens when we encounter life events that confront us about meaning and purpose and suffering – the death of a loved one, the loss of a job or a dream, the betrayal of trust, the struggle with cancer, or the theft of property or of dignity. These experiences send us into waters we do want to enter. In spite of our sadness, despair, fear, and anger, the truth is that most of us find important lessons in those deep and dark waters. We learn something about patience, something about persistence, and usually a great deal about compassion. Our lives are enriched by those uninvited dives. Not a few people count their most trying times as the times of their greatest spiritual growth.

Some diving into the waters of faith comes because we are invited, or in the language of the church, because we are called. Most of us do not experience our callings as dramatically and clearly as Isaiah did. We do not see God wearing a robe big enough to fill a room; we do not see seraphs; and we do not have visions of being touched on the lips with burning coals. For most of us, our callings come to us as persistent leanings in a particular direction. Some courses of action seem right in some way, some companions seem especially congenial, and some decisions seem clear in ways that are not entirely justified by the facts.

In Christian tradition, we have often used the word “calling” to apply only to the call to ministry, and usually ordained ministry at that. On the contrary, I believe that each person is called – that is, guided into choices, relationships, and work to which he or she is especially well suited. For some the call is to particular kinds of work; I think of teachers, health professionals, athletes. For others the call is to bring particular virtues to whatever kind of work they do. I think of retail clerks who show kindness and patience even when they are being treated rudely; I think of housekeeping staff who quietly keep our offices and public buildings safe and comfortable; I think of parents with children and caregivers with elders, who offer their best even when overtired, underpaid, and under appreciated; I think of artists, writers, and musicians who invest in the creative process even when their work is not recognized.

Whatever the shape of our callings, our response to them can draw us down to deeper faith and faithfulness. The experience of doing what we are meant provides a kind of satisfaction and meaningfulness that do not come when we are following other people’s plans and dreams for us.

We have much to learn from this story of venturing into the deeps. If Jesus had lived, as we do, on the edge of the Big Woods instead of on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, we might have stories in the gospel about great trees and how they sink their roots deep into the ground. We might imagine the majestic oaks of the oak savannahs as our teachers, reminding us to sink our roots deep when we are seeking, and when we are struggling, and when we hear our calling.

But oaks are not the only trees in the world, and deep roots are not the only to anchor oneself in the soil. Last week I had the joy of spending half a day in Muir Woods, the forest of California redwoods that is tucked into a gully just north of San Francisco. It is for me a holy place, and as we walked among these trees – almost all of them older than our nation, and many of them unimaginably old – as we walked among them, I was reminded that not all great trees have deep roots.

The California redwood has roots that are about 3 times as long as the tree is tall (and some of them are very tall). But the roots do not go down; they go out. The coast of California does not have deep soil as we do in the Midwest, and the trees there have adapted by having root systems that are very wide and much intertwined. To stand in a redwood forest is not only to stand among the trees; it is also to stand atop of a great network of roots that holds them together and holds them up.

Sometimes the life of faith is sustained not so much by depth as it is by breadth. We must not fall into the error of assuming that everything that is not deep is shallow. Some things that are not deep are wide. Some situations that do not seem to be taking us deeper into our faith are actually broadening our understanding, expanding our horizons, lengthening our time line, and stimulating our imagination. Sometimes we are oaks; sometimes we are redwoods; sometimes we are fishermen.

“The water of faith is deep enough for you to dive as deeply as you can,” my friend said. And indeed, the water has always been deep enough.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Prayer for February 7, 2010

Almighty and everlasting God, creator of all things seen and unseen, hear now our silent prayers, as we open our hearts to you in the sacred quietness.

God of faith and hope, we bring before you our prayers for those we have named this morning – we especially remember … Bring to each of them the gifts of mercy and grace that are most needed, according to your wisdom and love.

God of the sun and the moon and the stars, we pray this morning for those who are cold.

We remember first those who are suffering from the winter weather. We pray for the generosity of spirit and of resources to make sure that every person is warm enough – to provide shelters for those who have no homes, and to provide safe and affordable homes for everyone else. We pray, too, for your guidance in ordering our life as a community, a nation, and a world so that every person is sheltered from the weather.

We pray, too, for those who are suffering from cold hearts. We lift up to you all of the men and women whose life experiences and circumstances have made them numb to the needs of others and indifferent to the feelings of others. We trust you to pry open their hearts and to make room for us to bring them companionship and to offer them hope. Give us the persistence and compassion to invite them into the warm fellowship of our church and our homes, and the patience to wait for their response.

God of all life, we add our prayers for those who are frozen in sadness, despair, and mourning. When we hesitate to reach into their unhappiness, nudge us into gentle action. Protect us from the contagion of their gloominess, but protect them from our lack of understanding and impatience. Strengthen and uphold the gifted friends, therapists, counselors, and health care providers who help to open the doors to healing and hope.

God of our hearts, we pray, too, for the coldness of our own lives. Where we are stuck in habits and relationships that drain away our energies, help us to set aside the old and move into new ways of being. Where we are locked in conflict, help us to find common ground from which to forge new and healthier bonds. Where we are selfish and self-centered, help us to see the world through your generous eyes.

All these things we pray in the name of the one who is with us in all seasons of the year and of our lives, even Jesus the Christ, and we pray together now in the words that he taught us …